


Shouting in the Square

by Face_of_Poe



Series: The Conway Cabal [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, Anxiety, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Issues, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Past Underage Sex, The Federalist Papers, Therapy, recovery themes, references to past abusive relationship, snapshot fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-08 06:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 31,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12858798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/Face_of_Poe
Summary: A companion piece to See You on the Other Side of the [Senate] FloorSnapshots of Alexander's life in the years after his dramatic four months on Capitol Hill as a Senate page. With some recurring themes of: coming to terms with his affair with Senator Thomas Conway; his evolving sentiments on family and friendship; and finding his place in the political world that just doesn't seem to want to let him go.





	1. 1-3

**Author's Note:**

> My NaNoWriMo project, complete with a couple days to spare.  
> Rather than 50k words though, my project was to write 51 scenes. I'm horrid, and they aren't really in any particular order, but dates and their numerical placement (1-51) are given.  
> The parent fic (rated M, Underage & dubcon warnings) took place in early 2018; this fic covers material from 2014-2023, but most of it is in 2019-2022. Some angst, some drama, some fun. Some Lams. Whee. 
> 
> I don't know that this fic will be anything beyond plain confusing to anyone who hasn't read the original (and possibly plain confusing for anyone who has). But for anyone who wants to give it a shot, a brief overview of Alexander's background: like canon/history, his father left at 10, mother died at 12, cousin committed suicide shortly thereafter and he lost touch with his older brother, who was 18 by then here. My Alexander spent a year subsequently with Family Services before being fostered long-term until college by Tom Stevens, father of his friend Edward.  
> At 16, he served as a Senate page in DC and was drawn into a sexual relationship with Thomas Conway, a young senator from New Jersey. This ended poorly for myriad reasons and became a scandal, though Washington (then a senator, now president), Jefferson, and Madison managed to keep Alexander's identity out of the public sphere during the subsequent debacle. It ends with Alexander back on Saint Croix.

**Shouting in the Square**

  1. **_February 2021_** (27)



“Mister President, are you familiar with the increasingly popular blogger _Publius_?”

The question doesn’t much surprise him, after the weekend’s uproar. “My staff occasionally forward me some of the more… provocative posts, yes.”

“He claims to be a teenage college student, but do you find it cowardly to hide behind the convenience of internet anonymity?”

He frowns, thoughtful, peering out over the outreached microphones, waving off Lafayette’s efforts to draw him away from the gaggle. “I think it’s a shame that he – or she – does not feel comfortable putting their name and face to their words. But I can hardly judge them for it, without knowing the reasons why.” The reporter opens her mouth to follow it up, but he holds up a hand and adds, “I’m not going to comment on the specifics of a random political malcontent, save that I feel I must protest the characterization of the Vice President as a, quote, anti-charismatic national embarrassment, end-quote.”

There’s a general chuckle from the assembled reporters, and he takes the opportunity to duck away from the microphones and cameras and follow Lafayette through the doors back into the West Wing. “Are they serious?”

Lafayette shrugs as they wind their way through the halls. “It’s gaining traction.”

“Millions upon millions of random blogs out there, and the White House press corps is singling out this kid?”

“If it is a kid.” Washington shoots him a look under raised brows. “No teenager writes like that, is all I’m saying.”

“Hm.”

“And you, sir, just launched his site out of the comfortable bubble of academia and into the D.C. beltway by quoting him on-air.” A smile twists up the corner of his mouth, and Lafayette laughs. “My God. How pissed _are_ you at Adams?”

 

 

 

  1. **_September 2019_** (7)



****

Class is about to start when his phone vibrates in his pocket. Alexander retrieves it and nearly hits the button to send it to voicemail before the number catches up to him, and he freezes.

The pause lasts all of about three, slow thuds of his heart, and then he’s scrambling to shove his textbook back into his bag. He whips the bag over his shoulder, smacks the button on his phone to receive the call, tucks it between his shoulder and his ear, and hurries for the door. “Hey,” he breathes. “Hold on, I’m – hold on.” The professor glances up disapprovingly from his lecture notes at the podium as he rushes by, but must read something in Alexander’s face and says nothing about the early bailout.

“Hey,” he says again a bit louder once he’s out in the corridor.

“ _Alex_ ,” a static-laden voice says with audible relief, and he finds a blank stretch of wall to lean against.

The weight of the past ten days of anxious waiting and churning fear, however irrational it had seemed, lifts all at once, and he laughs, practically _giggles_ with the lightening of his heart. “Oh my God,” he slumps further into the wall. “Oh my God. Where are you?”

“ _The airport. Rumor has it to be one of the more reliable places to get a signal out on the whole island._ ”

“Where’s Edward?”

“ _He stayed on Saint Thomas. The university has enough generators to operate with relative normalcy. I should think he’ll be able to call or write you soon. It’s not so… well…_ ”

“Post-apocalyptic?” Alexander suggests, and hears Mister Stevens suck in a harsh breath.

He can predict the words in the split second before they come. “ _Alex, I’m so sorry_.”

“S’not your fault,” he mumbles, tipping his head back to thunk against the wall. “Just a… perfect storm of bullshit.” It’s quiet on the other end, but he can hear the man’s breathing. “Mister Pendleton barely let me out of his sight.”

“ _Good_.”

“And I think Reverend Knox was about to come to blows before they finally found me a new flight.”

The laugh is strained, but it’s a laugh. “ _Good,_ ” he repeats. “ _Good. And you… you’re alright_?”

“I’m fine. I have a roommate named Fish, how could I _not_ be fine?”

“ _Alex_.”

“I’m alright, really I am,” he wipes at his face. “The school sort of… guessed what had happened. Didn’t give away my dorm bed just yet. Professors are letting me catch up, I didn’t miss all that much.”

He doesn’t tell him – doesn’t _need_ to tell him – just how chaotic those first couple days had been. Rushing to do three days’ worth of orientation in one, the expenses of settling into his dorm after leaving Saint Croix with essentially two changes of clothes, a laptop, and a toothbrush. Though when he’d first arrived, all he’d cared about was an empty bed- collapsed onto a bare mattress and woke up three hours later to his new roommate staring at him in befuddlement.

Textbooks were covered in his scholarship, thank God, or he’d be halfway to bankrupt already.

“ _I’m glad you made it_ ,” Mister Stevens tells him quietly. Somber. “ _I might never forgive myself for leaving you alone on Saint Croix, but I’m glad you got to New York. Glad you found help getting there_.”

“I have a couple D.C. friends nearby, too. I’m going to be alright, okay? You’ve got enough to figure out back… back home.” 

_Home_ sounds more bittersweet than ever to the dark recesses of his own mind.

 

 

  1. **_July 2020_** (20)



****

_Adrienne’s_ looks exactly the same.

It’s weird, being back on the Hill, but there’s something reassuring in that consistency, two years later. Something reassuring in the unaltered interior décor, the tables arrayed exactly as they always were, the open one in the far corner where he always sat to chat with John. In the scones and croissants and madeleines that, more often than not, Addy thrust upon them to take back to Webster without letting them pay.

The door from the kitchen opens; an unfamiliar young man walks out, wiping his hands on his apron, and smiles apologetically towards the counter where Alexander is hovering, clasping the strap of his bag where it’s slung across his chest. “Sorry,” he huffs, “kitchen emergency. What can I get for you?”

Alexander blinks around. “Um. If you need to go put a fire out or anything…?”

He laughs. “Nothing quite so dire.” And he watches Alexander expectantly, vague smile on his face until he stumbles through an order.

And then he retreats to their usual table and waits not-so-patiently for John to fall through the doors ten minutes later.

They’ve talked – text, email, Skype – practically daily for more than two years. But it’s been more than eighteen months since they’ve actually _seen_ one another, so there’s a long and slightly sweaty embrace, followed by an even longer moment of just _staring_ at one another, eyes dancing atop beaming smiles.

“How was your train?”

“Good,” Alexander assures him. “Good. Better than flying.”

“Tell me about it,” John sighs, and collapses into the opposite chair. “One year down and I’m already over the trans-Atlantic flight thing.”

“Take a boat next time,” Alexander suggests, and gets a balled-up napkin lobbed at his head.

They sit and chat; John gets a drink when the line at the counter goes down, and they sit and chat some more. New York and London, school and work, Saint Croix and South Carolina and, inevitably, politics.

“Your dad getting nervous about November?” Alexander teases.

John just rolls his eyes. “ _Publicly_ , he’s very optimistic. But uh, yeah, he’s pretty sure his days as Speaker are nearing an end.”

“You never know,” Alexander fidgets with a stirrer stick, “the Dem-Reps could cling to a narrow majority.”

But John just shakes his head. “Washington’s upending the game. It’s hard to be in opposition to an Independent, let alone a hugely popular one.”

“And all the dumbasses who voted for Washington in the general but reelected their Dem-Rep representatives for the twelfth time are finally starting to see the error of their ways.”

“You know how the electorate is; can lead a horse to water, and all that, but -”

“ _Oh my God_.” They look up sharply in tandem. “Wait,” Addy reaches into her satchel and pulls out her phone. “Wait, don’t move. I need a picture for posterity; my favorite pages, come home to roost.” John smiles brightly; Alexander gives him bunny ears, and there’s probably at least one picture of John trying to get him in a headlock from across the table and sending their empty cups flying.

Once they have that settled, Addy thwacks Alexander upside the head. “Ow! What was that for?”

“For getting in a fight, getting yourself expelled, and leaving without saying goodbye, I’ve been waiting two years for the chance to do that.”

“Oh,” he blinks. “Um. I’m sorry.”

“Forgiven,” she concedes graciously.

John nods over to the counter, where the barista is doing his very best to look busy during a lull in activity, gaze periodically darting over to where his boss is sitting and chatting in the corner. “You have staff now.”

“I couldn’t keep up on my own anymore,” she admits. “Which is entirely Gil’s fault, because the morning after the election, he brought the shiny new president-elect and the shiny new first-lady-elect in here.”

John laughs incredulously. “Did you get the _Ben’s Chili Bowl_ effect?”

“I wouldn’t dare compare,” she grins, “but something like that. Used to be more of a local niche thing and now there’s something of a _tourist_ element, I hate it.”

“You do not.”

“I do not. But I had to hire a baker.” Both John and Alexander look to the pastry display in alarm. “Everything tastes the same, I swear, but I still have to make the madeleines, Gil _insists_ they come out better.”

“That’s adorable,” John sighs. “When’s the wedding?”

“May,” she answers without missing a beat, and he whips around so fast to look at her left hand that Alexander thinks he’ll get whiplash.


	2. 4-6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy December!

  1. **_November 2019_** (11)



****

**(Enter Me)**

(excerpt)

 

_Democracy is overrated._

_I mean okay, it’s not, but we’re pissing it away with a distinctly American pride in our own ignorant disinterest. We’ve turned politics into a national sideshow of reality television where little matters but the cable ratings, which has translated into this bizarre phenomenon where politics outside the national level get ignored entirely. You can’t show up every four years and expect everything to trickle down from DC It’s a bottom-up process._

__But while I have your attention, let’s talk about federal politics for just one moment. The country just did an extraordinary thing – a year ago today, in fact. It elected its first truly Independent president. A_ revolution _, the pundits called it, but here’s the thing:__

A president is only as effective as the legislation that gets put on his desk. Therein lies the tragedy* of our system of separated powers.

_So what did the collective absurdity of the US electorate_ do _? Started a revolution at the very top, and sent 92% of Congressional incumbents back to DC to keep drafting the same awful half-thought laws and keep being generally terrible. We did the utterly unthinkable, and sent a president to the White House with a unanimous vote in the Electoral College, and couldn’t even manage to flip the House in favor of the party more closely aligned with his views._

_You got the revolution – I’ll wait for the revelation._ Do better _, America. Stop tolerating ignorance and inaction, for if George Washington isn’t the proof that the parties and their corporate interests do_ not _, in fact, have a stranglehold on US politics, I don’t know what is._

_It’s a year until midterms – what are_ you _going to do about it?_

 

_-Publius_

_*the separation of powers is not a tragedy, it is a work of oft-times frustrating genius and is, in fact, one of the few things worth entirely preserving in the farce of a document we call a constitution – but more on that later._

 

  1. **_October 2019_ ** (10)



The man sitting behind the desk rises out of his chair as Alexander pushes slowly into the office after a last awkward glance backwards at the secretary outside. He’s older but not yet elderly, with a thin face, a beak-ish nose, and kind eyes that spark with interest as he holds out his hand.

“Thank you for coming, Mister Hamilton. Can I call you Alexander?”

He wonders if anyone’s ever said _no_ to that question. “Of course, sir.”

He releases his hand, waves Alexander into a chair opposite the desk, and settles back in with his elbows propped on the desk and hands clasped in front. “John Jay,” he introduces himself as if his name weren’t six inches from Alexander’s nose on a placard. “I’m the university president.”

_Also on the placard six inches from his nose_. “Yes, sir.” _Not to mention the email inviting him to this little sit-down_. “Um. What can I do for you?”

“You can relax, Alexander, you look like you expect me to tell you there’s been a mistake and your admission is rescinded.”

Heat rises in his cheeks, and his sweater is suddenly stifling. “Well, I’ve never met a university president before, sir.”

“No, you’ve just met the _actual_ president,” Jay laughs. “He and Jefferson wrote you an extraordinary letter.”

There’s something curious in his expression, and Alexander fights the grimace. “Yes, sir.”

And to his credit, he drops it with a mild shrug when Alexander declines to elaborate, scrutinizes him instead overtop his clasped hands for a moment, and then says, “I’ve seen you in the Union.”

“Oh, dear God.”

“Listened to you for a while. You’re sharp, you’re clever, and you’re wasting your time. And from what I understand, you don’t have much of that to spare.”

_Jesus_. This has to be a new one. Six weeks into term, and getting hauled into the president’s office for being obnoxious. So he twists his hands awkwardly in his sleeves and mumbles down at the floor, red in the face, “I’m sorry, if I’ve been… disruptive, I can -”

“I’m not telling you to sit down and shut up, Alexander, I’m telling you to do _better_.” He blinks up again, taken aback. “You’re shouting in the square like it’s 1800 while three-quarters of the students in hearing range are too absorbed in their smartphones to hear anything you’re saying at all. Catch up with the times. You’ve got the ideas – now find your _audience_ , because it’s not in the student union at Columbia.”

“…Oh,” he responds eloquently.

“Are you on Facebook?”

“No, sir.”

Jay’s brows shoot up in surprise at that. “Twitter?” He shakes his head. “Any social media? Guess that explains how you find the time to take twenty credits as a freshman.”

“There’s a lot of late nights and coffee involved,” Alexander admits.

“Well,” Jay spreads his hands, “find a platform. Find your voice. And find the time for those twenty credits, my God, how the hell did you get your advisor to sign off on that, much less the bursar? After missing the first week, no less.”

He shrugs. “I had a whole plan drawn up.”

Jay nods. “Uh-huh, I heard about that.”

“Told her what the schedule was like as a Senate page. I can handle the work.” 

“I don’t doubt it. Still, it feels incumbent upon me to ask that you mind your limits. College has a way of sneaking up on you and getting under your skin; and New York can be a delightfully distracting place.”

 

 

  1. **_November 2020_ ** (23)



“Have I mentioned I hate politics?”

Her own fiancé soundly ignores her, but the president leans over and murmurs overtop Gil’s head, “Me too, dear, me too.”

She blinks around at the antique furniture and portraits of old white men and their old white wives, the several inches of bulletproof glass in the windows overlooking the Rose Garden, and says, “Um.”

She’d ask, but a suspicion has been creeping up on her these past two years that George Washington might actually be one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime, honest-to-God _public servants_ , and she’s never been quite sure what to do with that. Can’t fathom what would inspire someone to do it who didn’t _want_ to do it, can’t fathom someone wanting to do it who didn’t enjoy it, and can’t fathom what sort of a person would enjoy the crushing responsibilities of the presidency.

Sometimes, can barely fathom Gil, who seems to approach the crushing responsibilities of the president’s chief of staff with inordinate delight.

Or in tonight’s case… “For fuck’s sake, we don’t need a breathless play-by-play of seats in California where a _dog_ would beat a democratic-republican so long as it had an F next to its name.”

“Language, dear,” Martha murmurs from where she’s curled up in an armchair off to the side and either completely dazed by the mundane coverage or half-asleep, or both.

“I beg your forgiveness, ma’am,” Gil replies with utter sincerity (and Adrienne can _tell_ ), because if there’s one person in this world he respects as much as George Washington, it’s Martha Custis Washington.

The difference is that, unlike the president, he’s terrified of the first lady.

Washington’s phone buzzes for what must be the twentieth time in the last five minutes; unlike the other messages, which he glanced at for a fleeting moment, he picks up his phone and peers intently at the screen, and then chuckles. “Jacky’s awake. He says two hundred and sixteen for the federalists, two hundred and twelve democratic-republicans, and seven independents.”

Gil glances over, unimpressed.

“He also says Monroe’s going to win in Virginia -”

“Nooo,” Gil scowls. “Quoi?”

“- but that we’ll pick up two Senate seats out west in…” He cocks a brow. “In Montana and Nebraska.”

“Should ask Jack what they’re serving at his election watch-party.”

Martha picks up a paperback and leans over the coffee table to thwack Gil in the knee with it. “Jacky should have come down from New York,” she sighs wistfully as she resettles in her seat.

“It’s Tuesday night, dear,” Washington murmurs as he taps out a slow response, “he has class tomorrow.”

“Which American genius _possibly_ thought holding elections in the middle of the week was a bonne idée?” Gil demands.

“Have I mentioned I hate politics?”


	3. 7-9

  1. **_January 2020_** (15) 



**The State of Our Nation**

(excerpt)

_I think we’ve finally moved beyond that era where it was in vogue to blame all of the world’s problems on the young folk but, to hell with it, I’m going to blame all of the country’s problems at least on the young folk. And I’m a young folk myself, so I kind of feel like I can say this without sounding entirely like an asshole._

_Honestly though, has there ever been a generation, in the annals of American history, that had so much outrage, so much concern, and been less bothered to get off its ass to do something about it?_

_(For the purposes of today’s conversation,_ do something _= vote.)_

_(For obvious reasons, this applies only to those 18+)_

_The so-called_ millennial _comprises a third of the electorate, yet getting half of them to turn out for a general election is a good day. Midterms? State and local races and measures? Forget about it. It’s like there’s some collective notion hanging over an entire generation that the Baby Boomers are killing the earth and setting their grandchildren up for a lifetime of stagnant wages and college loans and collective societal debt from too many unfunded wars, but by golly the polite thing to do about it is just wait for the olds to die out and finally lose their stranglehold on US politics._

__Kids, you’re the most tech-savvy and internet-literate generation, and you’re leaving your future, and your kids’ futures, and the_ world’s _future, in the hands of a bunch of dotards who can’t tell the difference between the_ Times _and the tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist blogger their batshit-crazy neighbor posted to “the Tweeters.”__

_But here’s the thing. Voting isn’t enough. Even knowing, on a very basic surface level,_ what _you’re voting for, isn’t enough. To make educated decisions, to_ want _to participate in the process, you have to understand the system._

_Three-quarters of America can’t name the three branches of government. One in three can name neither a single branch nor a single right enumerated in the First Amendment._

_Think about that._

_-Publius_

  1. **_June 2021_** (33)



**The _Gazette_ ’s James Rivington (JR) sat down with House Minority Leader and former Speaker Henry Laurens (HL) to talk about the brewing battle over an upcoming budget resolution, the political earthquake happening right now in D.C., and leading the minority party after a four-year tenure as Speaker.**

**And then mistakes were made.**

**_Editor’s note:_ ** **DO NOT PUBLISH**

(excerpt)

**…**

**…**

**…**

**JR:** _Before I let you go, Congressman – your eldest son made some waves last week when pictures surfaced of him at a wedding where –_

**HL:** “Pictures surfaced?” [laughs] Pictures were released by the White House photographer, with permission from John and the other young man in them.

**JR:** _Alexander Hamilton_.

**HL:** That’s right.

**JR:** _Do you know Mister Hamilton?_

**HL:** We met, briefly, when he served as a Senate page the same term as John. They’re good friends.

**JR:** _They… [pause] I’m sorry, do you mean to suggest the relationship between the two young men is just that of old friends?_

**HL:** I mean to suggest they’re good friends; you’ll have to ask them if they care to share further details of their relationship.

**JR:** _Your son John has always been very private._

**HL:** You’re starting to annoy me.

**JR:** _College campuses are often quite liberal places; did he choose to go to London for school to escape the pressure of having a prominent conservative leader for a father?_

**HL:** We’re going to stop talking about my son now.

**JR:** _Did you know your son is gay, before pictures began circulating from the Lafayette-Noailles wedding?_

**HL:** Alright. We’re done. [stands] I’m revoking my permission to use this interview, everything is now off-the-record. Good God, Rivington, where did you go to journalism school?

[Congressman Laurens exits room]

**JR:** _Goddammit_. _[pause] Robert, you can stop transcribing._

**RT:** Yes, sir.

**JR:** Why are you still typing?

**RT:** Because it’s funny, sir.

**_Editor’s Note 2:_ ** **Stop being a smartass, Townsend, interns are contractually forbidden.**

(archived)

  1. **_October 2019_ ** (9)



****

Alexander returns to his dorm after class at the end of the first week of October to find a sign tacked to the door, decorated in black and orange and purple marker for Halloween and with loopy calligraphy on the front reading: 

_Ham_

_&_

_Fish_

Said Fish is at his desk when Alexander walks inside, and he pops out one earbud and waves distractedly.

“We look like we’re advertising an Easter feast,” Alexander points out.

“For Halloween?”

“The _Nightmare Before Christmas_ sequel no one asked for.” He tosses his bag on the floor, rummages around in his desk for one of his spare notebooks and a pen, and drags his comforter off his bed so he can more effectively cocoon himself into it and settle in for the night.

Nick watches him, too used to the ritual to be bemused anymore. Once Alexander has himself propped against the headboard, blanket draped over his shoulders and wrapped around, notebook balanced in his lap where he sits criss-cross, he asks, “You know the Nicoll twins?”

“Sure,” he murmurs. “They’re in my econ class.”

They take all their classes together, and far as he can tell, do all the same extracurriculars with all the same friends; he wouldn’t be surprised if they’d tried to room together, but Columbia doesn’t have quite _that_ progressive of a dorm policy and there’s no sibling exception.

“Sammy said that Henry asked her to ask me to ask you if you’re into guys.”

It takes a moment for him to parse the sequence of requests there, and then he blinks up slowly at Nick. “What.”

Nick just throws up his hands in frustration. “When people tell you that you need a Facebook? _This_ is why you need a Facebook.”

“Whatever did people do before the internet?” he laments drily.

“They played six degrees of twenty questions about people’s relationship statuses and sexualities and it was awkward and awful.” Alexander snorts. “Shall I tell her that’s a _no_ , then?”

“I-” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “It’s not a _no_ , but I’m not… _looking_ for a relationship at the moment.”

And Nick shrugs and nods and hums to himself while he taps away as his phone, cool as you please, and then follows it up with, “So… are you looking for just some fooling around then, or…?”

“Jesus Christ, please tell me she didn’t _ask_ that on her brother’s behalf.”

“It could come up!” Nick defends.

Alexander gingerly closes his notebook and crosses his arms over his chest, which just has the effect of more tightly ensconcing him in his thick blanket. “Is there some reason Henry can’t just… _ask me_?”

“I dunno, guess he’s shy or whatever.”

“Okay well, no, I don’t want to fool around with anyone either.”

Nick finishes his text. Puts his phone down and claps his hands together. “Right. Alright then, if that’s settled.” He climbs to his feet and starts pocketing his room keys and his student ID. “C’mon then, up up. It’s Friday night and you have _got_ to get out of this room.”

“I just got back to this room.”

“Alex, you know what I mean. C’mon, you’ve spent a month killing yourself to catch up, live a little.”

He wavers. “Where are we going?”

“Just to the dining hall.”

“Oh.” Mollified, he starts to extract himself from his nest.

“Ah,” Nick holds up a single finger. “No textbooks allowed, no reading or writing at the table.” He scowls. “We will talk. Socialize. Make merry.”

“With whom?”

And like it should be obvious, he says, “The Nicoll twins.”

“What?” he yelps. “Then what was the point of that whole exercise?”

“So that any awkward you felt at being asked and any disappointment he felt at your answer could be handled in private, so that when you see one another in person, you can pretend it never happened at all. Duh. You coming?” 

Nick pauses at the threshold, door held open with his shoe. Alexander stares, bemused and baffled, sighs, and collects his own things. “Yeah, alright, hold on. I’m coming.”


	4. 10-12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should point out, the opening part of each chapter starting with ch 2 (so, all the blog posts) ARE in chronological order.

  1. **_March 2020_** (17)



****

**Let Me Spell Out the Name**

(excerpt) 

_Having gained a bit of a following and attracted a bit of feedback, I have now been reliably assured, from a number of concerned readers, that being young myself makes me no less of an asshole for saying young people are ruining everything._

_(I have also been accused, hearkening all the way back to my first post, of being an anarchist, because I called the Constitution a “farce” – if you can’t understand why that’s absurd, I suggest returning to your last level of schooling completed and demanding a refresher in logic and critical thinking.)_

_And for the uncanny number of you who say you would take me seriously “if only you weren’t hiding behind a stupid pseudonym,” well, I could call myself John Smith and post a stock picture off the internet or sneak a picture of my roommate and claim it’s me, and you’d never know the difference, so excuse me while I fight to keep a straight face in the face of your outrage._

_As my header states, I’m in New York City. I’m a college student. If you don’t believe me, I’ll be sure to cry myself to sleep tonight over the lost clicks._

_-P-U-B-L-I-U-S_

  1. **_December 2019_** (12)



****

“Hey, Hamilton.”

A piece of popcorn smacks him in the temple, and he turns a slow and unimpressed gaze on Angelica where she’s sitting against the front of the sofa and paying no apparent attention to the movie playing while she taps at her phone with one hand and has the other buried in the snack bowl. “…Yes?”

“The hell kind of privacy settings do you have on Facebook? I can’t find you through Liza’s _or_ John’s account.”

“He doesn’t have one, Angie,” Eliza mumbles, and Alexander glances her way in surprise. Sprawled on her stomach in the middle of the floor, head resting on his hands, he’d been sure she fell asleep twenty minutes ago. Peggy gave up on them not long after. “S’too busy for Procrastination-Book.”

“No such thing,” Angelica declares firmly. “Twitter? Instagram?”

It feels like his meeting with John Jay all over again. “Nope.”

“ _Anything_?”

“I have… a Blackboard account?” She lobs another piece of popcorn at him. “I’m sorry, but you have to call, text, or email me like it’s 2003.”

“Gross. What’s your number?” 

She sends him a text so he can add her contact. And then follows it up with:

 

_From: Angelica Schuyler_

_If you’re too busy to FB, does that mean I can only text you certain times of day? Weekends? Holidays?_

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_Ha ha. Ha._

_From: Angelica Schuyler_

_Are you internet-paranoid?_

He frowns over her way, but she’s actually watching the dumb movie they’ve put on.

 

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_Yeah, but not for the reasons you’re thinking_.

 

_From: Angelica Schuyler_

_What am I thinking?_

A huff of frustration escapes him and he whips back around, but Angelica has a finger pressed to her lips, and then points at Eliza, eyes closed and breathing deeply again. He rubs at his face and sighs.

 

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_I’m a coward._

_From: Angelica Schuyler_

_? I wasn’t thinking that?_

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_No, I’m saying – I’m a coward._

_Did you know I’m an orphan?_

_From: Angelica Schuyler_

_No. Assumed you didn’t go back to St C for the holidays b/c of the hurricane_

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_Well that too. I do have a guardian there rebuilding_

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_But I keep my name off the internet because I’m the worst sort of orphan._

_From: Angelica Schuyler_

_What sort is that?_

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_The sort that still has family out in the world who just don’t *want* him_

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_So I’m a coward. Scared to be found. Scared to be tempted to *look*._

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_See what ever became of my brother; find out my father is still alive._

_To: Angelica Schuyler_

_*insert daddy issues joke here*_

She snorts and claps a hand over her mouth, and he knows she _gets_ it, but this is something he’s come to actually enjoy about his time in Albany after the initial awkward of Senator “call me Philip” Schuyler picking him and Eliza up at the train station. He adores Eliza, has connected with her on a level they’d never quite achieved in DC now that they’ve both found themselves in New York for school.

Angelica though, has a darker streak, or perhaps it’s just that she’s older. Either way… she gets it. She gets _him_. He can confess things to her when he doesn’t want to burden Eliza’s deeply keen empathy; when a Skype call worked around the time difference just won’t cut it with John. 

She gets it.

 

 

  1. **_January 2020_ ** (14)



Having missed the first week of his first semester, Alexander quickly realizes as the second semester kicks off, was something of a boon. Missing the first _day_ , at least, because for fuck’s sake people, this is the _Ivy League_ , and it’s not even so much that the students can’t be bothered to crack a book or read the syllabus ahead of time so much that the professors seem to have this collective expectation that they’re all idiots who need their hands held from minute one.

So he sits through three new classes on Monday and gets near-identical spiels about attendance policy and late assignment policy and the university honor code, and one of them is apparently dealing with a bookstore shortage so half the class doesn’t even have the assigned readings available, and another one dismisses not fifteen minutes after they all sat down and it’s all just such a waste of _time_.

It’s his first class Tuesday morning that catches him off-guard. He slinks in thirty seconds ahead of the hour and slides quietly into a seat in the back of the room. The professor is sifting through his bag on the big table at the front of the room, until he emerges with the obligatory stack of syllabi. But then he just circles around, plops them in a pile, and sits on the edge of the table, removes a pair of reading glasses, and surveys the assembled students.

“Welcome to American Public Policy. If that doesn’t sound familiar, check your course list, our room bounced around a couple times.”

“Aw, man,” a boy in the middle of the left-hand row mutters, and collects his things and leaves without further comment.

Their instructor smiles, benign. “Anyone else? No? Okay. My name is Thomas Paine. I teach both undergrad and graduate policymaking courses, with an occasional foray into comparative politics and American political institutions. I keep my classes small because I prefer to _discuss_ instead of lecture, so if you’re here looking for a force-add, you’re free to stay and plead your case after class, but don’t harbor an overabundance of optimism.”

Alexander thinks he could like Professor Paine.

“I went to Princeton for graduate school, and then spent several years as a policy researcher and later domestic policy advisor for Senator Paterson of New Jersey. I retired to academia in the summer of 2015 to spend more time with my sanity.”

There’s a smattering of chuckles; Alexander’s good humor seeps away as he does some quick math, and wonders just what is his life. 

Paine moves on, begins talking about the semester schedule. Alexander pulls out his phone and starts texting under the desk.

 

_To: J. Madison_

_Do you know Thomas Paine?_

It only takes a few minutes for his response to come through.

_From: J. Madison_

_??_

_From: J. Madison_

_Oh he teaches at Columbia doesn’t he? Hamilton?_

Right. He’s never actually contacted the man from his own number.

 

_To: J. Madison_

_I’m in his class._

_To: J. Madison_

_He was still on the Hill when C took his seat, wasn’t he? Were they at Princeton together? I feel weird._

_From: J. Madison_

_Yes he was; I don’t know but probably; drop the class if you feel weird?_

_From: J. Madison_

_The President says that’s terrible advice, don’t drop the class._

_To: J. Madison_

_Are you kidding me right now?_

 

_From: J. Madison_

_I’m sitting in the Oval, kid, do you want me to hide my phone?_

_From: J. Madison_

_Don’t answer that._

_From: J. Madison_

_Paine was a legislative pain in the ass but he’s brilliant, don’t drop the class._

“Excuse me? Hi,” Paine smiles tightly at him when Alexander finally snaps his gaze up, wide-eyed. “I usually get at least another ten minutes out of my students before they start sneaking glances at their phones.”

Another few laughs. Alexander glances between the expectant professor and his screen, but no further message pops up to clarify the sudden buzz of confusion in his mind. So he jerks himself out of his stupor and shoves his cell in his hoodie pocket and tucks his pen into his notebook, jams the thing into his bag. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I – I don’t think I’m supposed to be in here after all, I should…”

He can feel the hot stares of the professor and the fifteen other students in the room as he yanks his bag off the floor and turns for the door behind him.

There’s a bulletin board on the wall with department news; so he sits on the floor, back pressed to the cinderblock that’s cold even through his sweatshirt, and stares blankly for a few minutes at the brightly smiling faces of the spring semester scholarship recipients and thinks about how he’ll never be one of them because the school is already footing his entire bill. The poor orphan immigrant, with the unlikeliest of recommendation letters from the president of the United States that’s a lie in and of itself and – 

He pulls out his phone again and scrolls through his contacts with trembling fingers.

 

_To: Dr Kortright_

_I’m freaking out_

_To: George W._

_Some days I feel like I only got where I am because you put me here and I hate that._

_To: George W._

_I’m sorry sir ignore that I’m feeling maudlin._

_From: Dr Kortright_

_Count to ten, deep breath, count backwards, repeat in French, repeat in Spanish, do it again_

_From: Dr Kortright_

_Are you safe?_

_From: Dr Kortright_

_You can Skype me after two your time_

_From: Dr Kortright_

_We have gotta get you a therapist in NY, my friend_

 

So he counts, he breathes; calms his racing heart, if not the knot in his stomach, and texts her back.

_To: Dr Kortright_

_I’m alright. I’ll email tonight._

_From: George W._

_You know what’s far more selective than Columbia? The Senate Page Program._

_You’re doing just fine on your own, Alexander._


	5. 13-15

  1. **_August 2020_** (21)



****

**Poppin’ a Squat on Conventional Wisdom**

(excerpt)

_There is a great American conceit in the pride of our origins. Righteous revolution. A new form of government born from civil discourse rather than a consolidation of military power in the wake of the British ouster, and it is an impressive thing, to be sure. The oldest modern democracy; the oldest national constitution._

_The document has been changed seventeen times since the Bill of Rights, but the great American conceit is that there was something fundamentally infallible about those very human [white] men who drafted it in the first place. Those men who enshrined slavery into our founding, and built a new nation bathed in the blood of their fellow man’s bondage._

_(And here one might argue ‘but the Constitution_ worked _! When the time was right, slavery was abolished!’ and I would argue back that the suffering of another century of slaves, the traumas of the Civil War, the brutal legacy of Jim Crow, do not redeem the original American sin simply because the country has managed to cling together in the aftermath of the horror.)_

_Let us consider instead, however, an issue that does not, on its surface, have the same dire moral framing: Congress._

_Congress has been inching its way towards the fringes for the past couple of decades; somewhere along the way (and the internet is much to blame, I suspect), we started defining our friends, neighbors, family, by their political views, rather than treat political views as simply another piece of trivia._

_We started treating our own tribe as the only viable path, and anyone who did not subscribe to it as the enemy._

_We elected an increasingly polarized Congress with a decreasing ability to get anything done at all._

_And then – well. And then._

_And then, we noticed George Washington. A veteran, and oh how America loves its vets. A man who remained fiercely apolitical during his service, as propriety dictates, and then quietly slid into Virginia politics not because he_ could _, but because he saw room for improvement and felt he had the perspective to offer._

_And then, he did the unthinkable and remained politically unaligned. Rose quietly in reputation and respect, gained the political clout to rival the influence he’d once held in the military, until the Federalist party offered him a deal too good to pass up: in a 50-49-1 Senate, take the helm of the majority. Give the party a strong leader, albeit one who would, frustratingly at times, not toe the party line – give them someone who could stand up to the political savvy of Thomas Jefferson (because lord knows, John Adams was never up to the task), and in exchange?_

_They cleared the field from the left and paved the way towards our first Independent president._

_And then from the right – Thomas Jefferson, in an endorsement move no one saw coming, one by all accounts unsanctioned by the party, handed him not just a win, but a unanimous electoral one._

_A watershed moment in American politics. A calculated move_ to the center _, from both sides. The sacrifice of exacting political goals in order to attain civility and stability._

_And it’s going to blow up in all their faces. Because we, the electorate, are too stupid to build upon this moment. Too stupid to understand that a unifying moderate, a hitherto unimaginably popular president, can only do so much if Congress is still flung far to either end of the spectrum._

_We’re three months out from the midterms, and by the current read of the situation, we’re poised to only fling it further. Politicians don’t know how to run unless to run_ against _something, and moderation has been the order of the day since Washington ascended to the highest office. And how do you run against popular moderation?_

_In a winner-take-all system, you make the moderate the sell-out; you make the extremist the righteous choice, the_ only _choice, and that tendency is only all-too-clear from the congressional primaries._

_The formation of Congress – particularly, the House – will forever lend itself to this counterproductive foolishness. The simplest measure to counter the stranglehold of radicals would be the repeal of the Reapportionment Act of 1929, because even the founders knew that one man could not reliably represent a district of a certain size, and the current district size, with the House limited at 435, is magnitudes larger._

_What we_ truly _need, however, are safeguards against political radicalization. Ranked-choice voting; at-large representation; proportional representation; fairly-drawn districts. Votes need to_ count _, even when the voters’ preferences surely won’t fall in line with the majority, or we are only further encouraging the march to the fringes._

_We need a system that allows a popular, moderate president to be a legislative strength and not a weakness. We need a system that allows for a popular, moderate_ Congress _._

_Can you imagine?_

_-Publius_

  1. **_September 2019_** (8)



****

It takes him a really, ridiculously, _embarrassingly_ long time to realize that the two very watchful, very casually but neatly dressed lurkers standing on either side of the giant suite commandeered by the student newspaper don’t just _look_ like bodyguards.

They are bodyguards. 

“You can ignore them,” the editorials editor tells him during his second week with the _Spec_ , when the older boy catches him staring. “God knows I do.”

“A pleasure as always, sir,” one of them calls over and gets a smirk in return.

He’d been introduced to the editorial team; he knows the editor is named Jack Parke, but distinctly feels that he’s missed something. 

“I’ve missed something,” he confesses.

The girl at the work station next to him snorts and mutters under her breath, “ _Freshmen_.” He just looks at her, nonplussed, until she sighs and says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “They’re Secret Service.”

Yeah, he’s missed something. “Um.”

“Oh my God,” Parke wheels his chair halfway across the floor until he’s behind Alexander, and reaches out with a foot to spin him around. “Freshmen!” he exclaims, much more delighted than the girl by his side. “That’s so cute!” Well, this went from confusing to patronizing with dizzying speed. “No, it’s not your fault.” Parke must see the rapid decline of his mood. “It’s just like – the _worst_ kept secret on this campus, it’s very refreshing to find someone who still lives the mystery.” 

“Oh… okay?”

He sticks out his hand. “John Custis. They let me enroll under my middle name in the interests of anonymity when George was just a rising star senator. The illusion kind of went out the window once my shadows showed up.”

_George_. Jesus fucking Christ. “I… had no idea.”

Parke shrugs and scoots his chair back, leans back in it and crosses his arms over his chest. “Media’s been pretty chill about it. Helps that I was already enrolled come the election. None of that _First Kid off to college_ puff piece bullshit.”

Truth be told, he’d entirely forgotten that Washington _had_ a stepson; remembers now, thinking back, the story that Angelica and Eliza told about John Hancock’s inauguration, about Patsy Custis getting the lot of them into trouble, and the passing mention of a brother in the saga.

Any number of responses flit through his head, each sounding more ridiculous than the last. 

_I’m sorry about your sister._

_I know your dad, actually, he’s a good guy._

_The president got me into this school with a full ride scholarship, how about that?_

Yeah, not getting into any of that.

“Well, it’s good to meet you – again,” he settles on, and gets a sharp smile in return as Parke rolls away once more.

It takes until that night for the rising unease to fully establish itself. The realization that Washington already had a relationship with the school, and surely very regular communication with the administration once it became clear that his son was going to need more protection than his relative anonymity afforded. 

_It doesn’t matter_ , he repeats to himself over and over as he tosses and turns in bed that night. He’s here. Conway, Arnold and Andre, expulsion, it’s all behind him no matter how much it feels like he’ll never quite pry himself out of that world. 

No matter how much it feels like he stills _owes_ something to that world.

 

 

 

 

  1. **_March 2022_** (41)



****

_Sender: Ned!@iMail.net_

_Recipient: EhhDotHam@iMail.net_

_Subject: CALL ME_

_I never know about your schedule these days so call me call me call me call me call me._

_-Neddy_

_sent: 10:06 03/12/22_

_Sender: Ned!@iMail.net_

_Recipient: EhhDotHam@iMail.net_

_Subject: re: CALL ME_

_Dad points out that in the absence of context, the prior email could sound rather dire and emergent. Everything’s fine. We’re all fine. The tone of text is nigh-impossible to read, and my demands for your immediate attention are driven by excitement, not panic._

_sent: 10:15 03/12/22_

_Sender: Ned!@iMail.net_

_Recipient: EhhDotHam@iMail.net_

_Subject: screw it I’m just going to tell you_

_Because I’m impatient and don’t want to wait for you to get out of bed/get home from work/stop Skype-sexing with your boyfriend/whatever you’re doing._

_I didn’t want to get your hopes up so I didn’t tell you I was applying, but I got into med school at American. The one in DC. Not the one in the Caribbean._

_(Well, I got into AUC as well, that was my fallback but I DON’T NEED IT BECAUSE I’M COMING STATESIDE.)_

_I know it’s not New York, but it’s damn close comparatively, so call me._

_-Neddy_

_sent: 10:47 03/12/22_

“Oh my God.” Alexander sits bolt-upright in his chair at the kitchen table where he’s crunching absently through a bowl of cereal and perusing his email.

Hugh glances across the table over his cup of coffee, and must see a familiar manic glint in Alexander’s eye, attributes it to work, and looks back down at his phone.

 

_Sender: EhhDotHam@iMail.net_

_Recipient: Ned!@iMail.net_

_Subject: THAT’S WHERE JOHN IS GOING IN THE FALL._

_I don’t know why I just sent this email, I’mma call you now._

 

_sent: 11:52 03/12/22_


	6. 16-18

  1. **_November 2020_** (22)



****

**Passionately Smashing Every Expectation**

(excerpt)

 

_Alright kids, we’re six hours out from the first polls opening and I’m ready to make my final assessment. Most of my predictions, you’ll likely see reflected in polling averages, but I’m calling a few oddballs. An overview, before I break it down (buckle-in, this’ll be a long one):_

**_summary_ **

_Let’s start in the Senate- our three big upsets of election night will be in Virginia, Montana, and Nebraska. (Yes, I’m calling MT & NE for the federalists, don’t fight me). Other races will perform as expected, giving the federalists a net gain of 3 seats and bringing the body to a 59-41 split, which is sure to drive everyone even crazier than before. After the upsets out west, the loss of the VA seat and, consequently, a filibuster-proof majority, will especially sting so, congratulations James Monroe on being the new most-hated junior senator._

_In the House – the good news, sort of, is that dem-reps are going to lose their majority. Speaker Laurens, it’s been a pleasure._

_The bad news is that the federalists are going to take a plurality of seats but aren’t going to have a real majority, putting an obscene amount of power into the hands of 7 independents elected across 4 swing states._

_Which means our breakdown come January will be: 216-212-7._

_House campaigns are weird and 4 of the 7 have never held any sort of public office before, so I’m reserving judgment on how this will play out in terms of caucusing and voting trends. I am confident in rejecting the notion that 6 of the 7 will help re-elect a dem-rep speaker, however, since 3 certainly lean federalist._

_Among the statehouses – incumbents will generally perform well; notable exceptions Ohio and Nevada. Standouts include total wipeouts of dem-rep majorities in Maine and New Hampshire state legislatures (the NH governorship will go federalist), Georgia narrowly clinging to its dem-rep majority, Missouri splitting the federalist governorship with a dem-rep lieutenant governor, and South Carolina electing its first federalist governor in…???...while still keeping a solid 2/3 of its state legislature dem-rep._

_Go home, Missouri and South Carolina, you’re drunk._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_-Publius_

  1. **_March 2020_** (18)



****

“There’s nothing,” Aaron grumbles as he stomps dirty slush off the bottom of his shoes, “like springtime in the city.”

“Global warming my ass,” Abe tips his water bottle in the newcomers’ direction. “Cheers.”

Alexander hovers in the corner of the crowded apartment and watches. This reunion makes him nervous, and he hates that. Hates that it feels different from reconnecting with Eliza, with Hercules and Abe. Hates how hard it has always been to get a read on Aaron Burr, how his silence tends to give an automatic appearance of judgment that – supposedly – according to Eliza – isn’t quite fair.

So he sits and watches as Hercules claps Aaron on the back and turns radiant smiles on the two young women accompanying him. As Eliza takes the younger of the two by the hands and beams and kisses her cheeks before turning and shaking hands with the other, a new acquaintance it seems.

Abe goes to get his greetings in, and Eliza takes pity on Alexander and drags the first of the two unfamiliar faces over to his corner. “Alexander, this is Kitty Livingston. Kitty, Alexander Hamilton.”

“Livingston,” he says, and it’s not quite a question.

She grins anyway, dimpled and distracting. “Look at this one, he knows his state politics.”

“Alexander was with us in D.C. junior year,” Eliza explains. “He knows his stuff.”

“And what brings you to New York, Alexander Hamilton?”

“Abe and I go to Columbia.”

She blinks around, thick braid of red hair whipping about her shoulders as she turns her head side-to-side. “Which one’s Abe?” He points to where his friend is talking with Aaron and his date at the door still. “Ivy League dorks,” she nudges Eliza, “am I right?”

Eliza fixes her with a deadpan stare. “You go to Princeton, Kitty.”

“I meant it as a compliment!” She winks, and then ducks away to pull off her heavy coat and drape it over a kitchen chair.

Alexander finds his gaze trailing after her, a bit dumbfounded and a bit… smitten?

What.

His life is doomed to recurring entanglement with New Jersey politicians, it seems.

“Alexander.”

He jerks his head back around and stares blankly at Aaron Burr’s outstretched hand. A heavy silence weighs between them, even as the rest of the apartment chats and laughs, old friends and new, shucking shoes and pouring drinks and tales of the train up from Princeton.

But he’s frozen and he stares, until Aaron’s brows pull in a bit and he forces a tight smile, and Alexander realizes – _oh_. Aaron’s just as apprehensive about this encounter as he is.

So he forces himself to move, and takes the older boy’s hand in a firm grip. “Mister Burr, sir.”

The eye-roll is _almost_ affectionate, and the moment breaks. “How is New York treating you, Alexander?”

“Good,” he says, “good. Columbia is…”

“Good?” Aaron suggests.

He hunches his shoulders, shrugs and shifts his weight, awkward and unsure. “Probably a sight better than D.C., so far.”

“That’s good.”

He doesn’t know what he expected; has never been able to particularly fathom his stoic one-time roommate, and the days spent fretting over the promise of a reencounter, since Eliza invited him and Abe and Hercules to her place in Lower Manhattan for a mini-page reunion, have certainly not helped.

His world shifted a bit on its axis when John had whisperingly confessed to him the first night he’d spent in Saint Croix that Aaron had guessed everything. That he’d suspected Conway for what he was at the start, relayed those suspicions to Charles Lee, and been soundly shut down. 

That he’d taken Lee at his word, and spent the rest of the term trying to figure out a mystery he’d already solved, until Alexander and Conway vanished from the Hill on the same day and only hours apart.

He doesn’t know what he expected, but as they stand and smile forcedly at one another, it becomes abundantly clear that there will always be something of a chasm between them- though perhaps narrower now than it had once seemed.

 

 

  1. **_December 2020_** (24)



****

The front door of the Jefferson family’s Monticello estate opens, and James finds a noisemaker being blown in his face. “Happy New Year, _Congressman_.”

He blinks. 

Marty Jefferson comes and shoves her younger sister aside, graciously waves him into the house and out of the chilly mountain air. “That’s Congressman- _elect_ , Polly.” Polly, fifteen and not altogether fussed with semantics, throws up a hand that’s somewhere between a greeting and dismissal, and wanders back off towards the den with her cell phone in hand. “Dad’s in the kitchen.”

“Oh, sweet merciful Jesus.”

She makes a commiserating sound and leads the way. There’s no scent of anything burning yet, so the day may yet be saved. In fact…

“Jem! Spiced cider?” There’s a mug being thrust into his hand barely before he’s cleared the threshold, and it does smell rather pleasant. “It’s hot.”

The kitchen’s a mess, but it’s manageable. Mostly cutting boards with scraps of onion and carrot and celery and God knew what else, a stock pot bubbling away on the stove, the cider in a slow cooker wedged into a spare bit of counter space.

“Domestic life suits you, Thomas.”

Marty snorts at the counter where she’s ladling herself some cider. “He’s so bored, Mister Madison, help.”

“I’m not bored.”

“The rest of the UVA trustees board had to ask him to cool it when he started showing up with rough sketches for campus building remodels.”

Thomas throws up his hands in frustration; James dodges hot specks of soup broth from the wooden spoon he’s still holding. “Do you know how _old_ some of their facilities are? And not like, the _good_ kind of historic-old. Just old. Outdated. Inefficient.”

“You know why UVA is terrible, Thomas?”

“Don’t say it, I swear to -”

“Because it’s not Princeton.”

He stabs the spoon in his direction. “I hate you.”

“I’ll be a member of the United States House of Representatives in five days, I’d better get used to it.”

“So long as you know it’ll take me your entire first term to stop calling it _Monroe’s seat_.”

“It is the end of an era, to be sure.”

“And while we’re at it,” Thomas fiddles with the knobs on the stove, and James is pretty sure he’s just looking busy and has no idea what he’s actually doing, “ _Senator_ Monroe? Did _not_ see that coming.”

James shrugs. “No one did.”

Marty coughs awkwardly. “Publius did.”

Thomas rolls his eyes. “Sorry, _who_?” James turns to her.

“Dunno,” she reaches into her back pocket and pulls out her phone. “Some blogger.”

“There’s no way,” Thomas turns back to his soup. “I’m sorry. A timestamp trick, or _something_ …”

“Jack told me he read it election _morning_.”

James cocks a brow. “Your dad lets you talk to boys now?”

“Y’all are awful,” she declares over the sound of her father’s guffawing. Which sets them off on a tangent of lighthearted bickering that eventually has Marty stealing something from the pantry and Thomas chasing after her, while James pulls out his own phone and does a quick search for _publius midterms 2020_.

The top result is not the blog itself, but an article from an online news source that tends towards the clickbait end of journalism.

_The Small-time Blogger Who Out-predicted the Pros_

He takes a long sip of his cider and starts reading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just really love Jefferson & Madison platonic domestic bliss, don't fight me.


	7. 19-21

  1. **_January 2021_** (26)



****

**Fools who Run their Mouths Off**

(excerpt)

 

_An open letter to the arrogant, anti-charismatic, national embarrassment known as Vice President John Adams:_

_We know that you view your current position as a mere place-holder for the presidency. But lemme tell you, Johnny boy, 2026 is a loooong time away and the office you presently hold comes with its own responsibilities._

_Since there isn’t much need of you to exercise formalities in the Senate now that the newly elected senators are all sworn in, those responsibilities mostly boil down to staying out of the president’s way while you’re riding his coattails to the Oval Office in another six years. That’s the long-term [yet incredibly shortsighted] deal you and your bosses made to get you on the ticket, and the stakes now are a lot higher than the backroom brawls and deal-making in the Senate._

_As my mother always said – if you can’t be an asset to the administration, go back to Boston and stick to photo-ops._

_Sit down, John._

_-Publius_

  1. **_August 2021_** (36)



****

“Wolcott!”

Alexander stares in awe around the newsroom as the woman in question holds up a single finger and half-swivels in her chair. She’s got a phone tucked under her ear and a notepad balanced against her knee, though by the lazy motions she seems to be doodling more than actually taking notes. 

Mister Coleman keeps up the running commentary that he’s had going since he greeted Alexander at the lobby, but he’s got half his attention enthralled in the hustle and bustle of the sprawling space before him. There’s a maze of cubicles spanning the expanse between the doorway where he’s standing with the assistant editor at the top of the stairs and the fishbowl conference room where a half dozen men and women are holding what looks to be a quite excitable conversation.

It’s cluttered and messy and chaotic, and he loves it. Phones ringing. Stacks of newspapers sitting on a table under the window to his right and, at a glance, not even just copies of the _Evening Post_. Televisions mounted here and there throughout the room with all the major news networks, a police scanner reporting constantly in a corner while a young man listens with one ear for anything notable. Every individual workspace is personalized – family photos, funny comic strips tacked to the divider wall, checklists and phone numbers and subway maps.

He looks out the window over midtown and feels _alive_. Like the pulse of the city thrums through this space and he only needs to attune himself to it just so.

“Ah,” Mister Coleman beckons the woman over, liberated from her phone call. “This is Olivia Wolcott, she’s one of our more… tenacious Wall Street reporters.”

He shakes her head. “I’ve seen your byline. The Duer credit scandal, right?”

Her brows rise in pleasant surprise. “I like this one already, Bill.” Alexander smiles. “Sharper than the average intern.”

Coleman laughs before Alexander can take umbrage. “Not an intern. Mister Bryant sent his name straight to my desk, Alexander is joining us as a researcher.”

“Oh. Sorry. You’re older than you look.”

“Probably not,” he admits with a sigh.

She studies him and grimaces and hedges, “…Twenty…?”

“In January.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Just don’t take him out on your post-scoop benders,” Coleman begs. “Anyway, I’m assigning Alexander to your team for the Ashe investigation.”

Any good cheer remaining on Wolcott’s face drops away, and she glances awkwardly between Alexander and her boss for a moment. “Um. Bill. I told you – and no offense, kid,” she hastens to assure him, “but I said I needed some experience on my team, not the latest _family friend of the publisher_ hire.”

He huffs out a laugh. “Look – my experience may be limited to the college paper but I can tell you that you’re far too focused on Congressman Ashe’s campaign donors and entirely missing his personal connection to Senator Blount’s office and _his_ big bank links.”

Wolcott blinks at him, and then at Coleman, repeats the circuit, and then asks her boss incredulously, “Who the fuck _is_ this?”

“Alexander Hamilton,” he tells her cheerily. “Your newest researcher. Give him the tour, would you?”

And Coleman ducks away, hands in his pockets, sounding quite pleased with himself. Wolcott watches him go, weaving his way among the cubicles towards his office in the back of the newsroom, and then sighs. “What’s your college paper?”

“The _Daily Spectator_.”

“Columbia?” She at least looks vaguely impressed at that. “When do you graduate?”

“Just did.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” He grins, all teeth. “What’d you do for the paper?”

“Assignments manager, copy-editing; sometimes moonlighted as the digital editor.”

She sucks her teeth, thoughtful, and props a hand on her hip. “Journalism?”

“Poli-sci and econ.”

And after another moment’s consideration, she throws her hands up in the air. “Alright. Let’s do this, Alexander Hamilton.”

 

 

  1. **_May 2021_** (31)



****

It takes five words to send icy chills rippling down his spine; to make his hands involuntarily tighten at John’s waist, and then let go altogether, sharp and shocked.

To make his heart crack, to feel the shame and humiliation rise, internally berating himself at the sheer audacity of thinking he could have this, even now, three years on, three years separating them from the demons of their checkered beginnings.

Five words.

“I can’t do this, Alex.”

His high of the past several hours plummets and old insecurities promptly rise to fill the void. The teasing, the dancing, the kissing… longing glances and cheeks flushed hot, smitten and expectant, and was it a misunderstanding? Pity?

Did he simply change his mind?

“I’m sorry,” John breathes, leans down to press his forehead to Alexander’s, and that twists something cruel in his gut because they’ve been here before, this exact place, and it’s more sense-memory than anything that threatens to drag him back to that night in their dorm room at Webster after an unpleasant encounter with John’s father, after –

-after he’d fled the National Archives in a fit of conflicted confusion, at the first inkling that there was something a bit off about Thomas Conway, and where would they be today if only he’d confessed those sentiments to John then, if he hadn’t let the distraction of Henry Laurens and his fledgling crush on John push those thoughts selfishly from his mind.

John would have seen through the rest of it in a heartbeat; he wouldn’t have been like Aaron, cautious, watching and waiting, afraid of making unfounded accusations and risking his _own_ reputation.

Even if Alexander vowed to hate him forever for it, John would have interfered – would have prevented him from ever climbing into Thomas Conway’s bed in the first place.

Not since those first weeks back on Saint Croix, alone and ashamed, fearful for his future, has he been so convinced that he’s ruined his own life.

He’s going to graduate from Columbia in a few months’ time; short of disaster, he’s going to graduate _summa cum laude_ from an Ivy League school at the age of nineteen. He’s pretty sure he just got an informal offer from the president of the United States for a job at the White House, if he’s interested, but this –

This matters in a way none of the rest of it does.

“… _Alexander?_ C’mon, you’re scaring me. Alex, _please_ …”

There are hands on his face. Loosening his tie, brushing his hair off his forehead.

He realizes he’s kneeling on the floor. Kneeling on the floor of his ornate hotel suite and hyperventilating.

He holds up a hand and tries to suck in a deep breath. Counts in his head. Breathes. Backwards. Again. Realizes when John joins in two repetitions later that he’s murmuring under his breath. “I’m… I’m okay,” he mutters finally, ducks back from John’s touch. “I’m okay.”

“That… happen a lot?”

“No,” he gets out through gritted teeth as he drags himself to standing, fidgety and nauseous. “No. It doesn’t. But it happens. I’m okay.”

“I didn’t mean to -”

“You didn’t.”

“But I wasn’t -”

“It’s _fine_ , John,” he sighs, fights down the instinct to snap because they’ve been _here_ too and it’s not a place he wants to re-visit, awkward distance tinged with bitterness between them. “I just. I get it, okay? You don’t have to… I get it.”

John hasn’t moved from the floor, and he stares quizzically up at Alexander as he sits heavily on the edge of the bed. “ _What_ do you get?”

“That there’s just… too much. Too much bullshit. Too much… _Conway_ always lurking in the background.”

But John makes a low and shocked wounded noise in his throat and climbs to his feet to harshly state, “That fucking asshole can go to hell, are you serious?”

“Then why -?”

“I didn’t mean – _Jesus,_ Alexander, don’t you know? Don’t you know by now how I feel about you? Don’t you know how much I hate the ocean between us, seeing you once a fucking year and pretending that emails and Skype calls around busy schedules and the time difference could ever _possibly_ be enough?”

John swipes at his eyes; Alexander feels hot tears streak down his own cheeks. “I don’t understand.”

“I can’t do _this_!” he practically shouts. “I can’t cheapen this… _thing_ we have with a one-night fumble in this ostentatious-as-fuck hotel room, and then watch you board a train in the morning before I head to the airport to fly back across the fucking Atlantic. I don’t just…” he deflates, and finishes barely above a whisper. “I don’t just want to… kiss you when I see you and pretend everything’s the same during the long months in between.”

The tightness in his chest loosens, and he can feel the tendrils of warmth slowly returning, inching back around his heart and letting the barest hint of hope creep back in. But he struggles to meet John’s eyes and whispers down to his lap instead, “What if… what if I didn’t _want_ to pretend everything’s the same anymore?”

“That a commitment you’re ready to make?”

“I – _yeah_ ,” he croaks, blindsided by emotional whiplash, left fumbling and baffled as to why it’s taken them this long at all. “Yes.”

“It’s not an ultimatum,” John rushes to explain. “I’m not – it’s not _now or never_. I’m just saying – I get it, if the distance thing scares you, the not knowing where we’ll be in a year.”

Alexander understands what he’s saying, but, “It’s always been you,” he confesses, and then he’s crying again and shifting on the bed with John’s weight. “Even then,” he gasps, “when I didn’t know what I’d gotten myself into and couldn’t figure how to get out…” Hands on his arms urge him around and he turns and tucks his face into the crook of John’s neck, his tears soaking the collar of his expensive suit jacket, and he just… lets himself be held.

Eventually, they shed their jackets and kick off their polished shoes, and curl up in the middle of the bed, just wrapped around one another, warm and comforting. “I’m a mess,” Alexander points out softly. “A veritable human disaster of sleeplessness, over-caffeination, and general anxiety.”

“Just… just promise me,” John whispers into his hair. “Don’t do what you did three years ago.”

He snorts. “I promise you, I won’t engage in misdemeanor sexual activity with older -”

He gets a pinch to the arm. “Don’t disappear on me,” he begs. “Don’t hide. If you’re ever in trouble, _any_ kind of trouble – if you make a mistake – let me be in your corner.”

He remembers this, too.

John pressed against his back, squeezed precariously onto a narrow top bunk; Alexander stiff and shying away from his touch. Murmured questions, desperate worry shining through while Alexander choked on the stress, the fear, the panic. And despite it all – John’s help and his love, freely offered, his unconditional reassurance.

Alexander slides his hand into John’s and squeezes tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I mapped out a rough idea of scenes I wanted to include, that last one was going to be, like... mild smut? Sorry. GRATUITOUS ANGST IT IS THEN.


	8. 22-24

  1. **_February 2021_** (28)



**Spark Into a Flame**

(excerpt)

 

_And I thought my readership spiked after the midterms – yikes._

_I could be diplomatic and charitable here and choose to presume that the president did not fully consider the effect of quoting this blog to an open press pool, and particularly the context in which it arose; however, I do not have so little respect for the president’s common sense and political savvy as to think it an accident, and shall instead enjoy inferring validation on my thoughts regarding the vice president._

_As to the multitudes of you who asked how it feels to know that President Washington reads this, I don’t particularly flatter myself to assume he’s getting email alerts and breathlessly taking in every which whim that flits through my head. More likely, some junior staffer got caught chortling at their phone and things spiraled in something of a one-off._

_(But I won’t deny the ego-boost.)_

_And for the few dozen (and counting) requests – no, I have no interest in breaking down the wall between my internet-life and my real-world-life and no, it’s not because I’m actually a bored congressional staffer or a thirty-two year-old computer hacker sitting in my grandmother’s basement. No, I have no interest in doing a profile with or without my real name attached and no, I don’t care that you treat discretion with the utmost importance if I want to remain anonymous. No, I have no interest in doing an off-the-record sit-down “just ‘cuz.”_

_The internet has the potential to bring out the best and worst of us, in my opinion. Renders some of us cruel, and unable to treat the human being at the other end of a screen with the same respect we’d treat a random passer-by on the street. But for some, for any number of equally-valid reasons, there is potential for escape – to share parts of ourselves we can’t yet display in our day-to-day living._

_Most important, perhaps, is the burden of responsibility everyone here takes on - to set the terms of your experience in a virtual environment to suit your real-world needs._

_For me? That means that I shall remain respectfully yours –_

_-Publius_

  1. **_August 2021_** (34)



Alexander watches Hugh Mulligan stack two huge, _heavy_ boxes of books on top of one another and start hauling them up the stairs like they weigh nothing at all. “Um,” he says as Hercules walks into the lobby with his big suitcase, and points at where Hugh is disappearing around the landing.

“He works out,” Hercules shrugs. “Man, you do not own a lot of stuff.”

“Clothes and books. What else do you need?”

Hercules grabs a duffel bag and throws it over one shoulder, and starts for the stairs with the suitcase trailing behind. Alexander follows with a slightly lighter box of school things, a garment bag laid across the top, and his backpack slung over his shoulders. “You might find,” Hercules calls down to him as they ascend, “that in a world without a dining hall, you need just a _few_ more possessions.”

“Dunno why, there’s a coffee shop next door and a pizza place across the street.” He gets the driest of dry stares over Hercules’s shoulder in return. “Kidding, kidding. I will buy a plate and a spork and call it a day.”

“Yeah, I’m going to have my brother call me with weekly status reports for a little while.”

They navigate the narrow stairs up to the fifth floor, sweating and panting in the poorly air-conditioned building, turn a corner so tight that Alexander can’t fathom what people do when they have to move honest-to-God _furniture_ into this place, and then lug the last of his things into the apartment where Hercules has just moved _his_ things out to head back to school in the morning.

It’s weird, seeing the small bedroom empty save for his luggage and boxes. Stripped bed and tiny closet, a little corner desk and yeah, okay, he might need to buy a _few_ things to round out the space, but it’s his, and that’s – well. It brings an unexpected surge of emotion rising in his chest that he instinctually tries to fight down.

Doctor Beekman would be disappointed.

Doctor Kortright would skip disappointed and just call him on his bullshit.

So he lets himself _feel_ , the good and the bad, and when Hercules and Hugh fall into some absurd debate in the living room, he quietly closes the door and crosses to the window. Pulls up the blinds and looks at the too-close building across a narrow alley, and he’s pretty sure he won’t exactly regret a sunlight-free space but it’s a distinct contrast to the greenery outside his window in the Stevens house.

The room had been an office.

He remembers hovering on the threshold, taken aback. Hadn’t seen the inside of the house in a year and a half, not since James came to pry him out of Edward’s bed, still weak from his bout with the flu and sick with grief besides.

It had been an office, and then eighteen months passed like a bizarre nightmare and he woke up back in the Stevens house except instead of Edward’s room where he’d always slept – sharing the bed when they were younger, or piling blankets and pillows on the floor when that became too cramped – he found himself standing in an altered space, cleared of its old clutter, a new bed with carefully neutral linens, the desk moved under the window, bare except for a green-shaded reading lamp.

Edward excitedly carrying his suitcase in and plopping it on the bed. Mister Stevens hovering back, visibly anxious, constantly biting back the instinctive question – _are you alright?_ Wondering where his son’s friend had gone in the time between. Urging Edward to leave him be and give him some time to unpack and settle, his words echoing distantly in Alexander’s head while he stood and stared at the determinedly blank room, an open slate to make his own.

The phone’s ringing in his ear before he quite realizes he’s decided to make the call. It connects on the second ring. “ _Hey, Alexander_.”

“Hi.”

“ _Is it moving day?_ ”

He falls onto the edge of the bed and lets out a heavy breath. “Yeah. Already done, actually. Still need to unpack.”

“ _When’s the job start?_ ”

“Next week. I’m going to make the trip tomorrow and see how long it takes to get there; plan out my procrastination as efficiently as possible.”

Mister Stevens laughs, and Alexander closes his eyes and just _misses_ the man, misses them both, together back on Saint Croix until Edward’s next semester starts, while he’s feeling out the next chapter of his life thousands of miles away in New York. “ _College really has changed you, then; next you’ll tell me that you’re sleeping in_.”

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” It’s quiet for a long moment, and he swallows thickly and confesses, “I don’t know why I called, really, I just…”

“ _You don’t need a reason_ ,” Mister Stevens suggests gently and _oh_ , there’s that tightening knot of emotion lodged in his chest bursting.

 

When he walks out to find Hercules and Hugh engaged in an epic Mario Kart battle half an hour later, they have the good grace not to mention his red eyes (or the thin walls), and when Hercules loses the race epically, he gets up and darts into Hugh’s room and comes back with a neatly-wrapped box. “Relevant to our conversation on the stairs,” he says.

“Oh no.”

“John, Eliza, and I went in on a housewarming gift.”

He takes the box and grins. “If Eliza was involved, I know it can’t be too impractical.”

“Oho,” Hercules wags a finger at him. “This is the _height_ of practical.”

He unwraps it. And stares.

“Oh my God.”

“Right?” It’s an alarm clock. A coffee-brewing alarm clock. “John insisted on the one that could do tea, too; London is really getting its claws into him.”

“I never need to leave the apartment again.”

Hugh holds up a finger. “You’ll need some coffee grounds.”

“I only need to leave the apartment once,” he amends.

So maybe he’s home and homesick, too. Maybe he can be both.

Maybe that’s okay.

 

  1. **_February 2020_** (16)



“I regret, Mister President,” Madison intones evenly, standing stock-still in the middle of the presidential seal, hands clasped tightly at the small of his back, “that I must reveal myself to be a liar.”

Washington cocks a curious brow as he surveys his communications director. Never before has he known someone with the ability to write such powerfully expressive speeches who displays almost no emotion in his day-to-day interactions but, here they are.

He’s young, comparatively, but he’s known Madison since the tail-end of his college years, and feels like he’s got a pretty good grasp on his character by now. So he holds his gaze level and guesses: “Thomas talked you into running for Monroe’s seat.”

Madison’s stiff composure deflates; he groans and puts his head in his hands, and turns to collapse onto the sofa in the middle of the room. “I hate him.”

“No, you don’t.” Washington chuckles under his breath and rises to join the younger man on the other side of the office. “Though I might a little bit since now I have to fill your position again. No,” he waves off the apologetic look descending over Madison’s face. “Don’t be sorry. It was an extraordinary favor you did, coming to help get this administration running smoothly after losing Arnold six months before the election, and I’m honored to have had you with us for this past year here.”

“The honor has been mine, Mister President.” He clears his throat and might actually be a little choked up, and that touches Washington a bit. “The filing deadline is in a month, so I have time.”

Too soon, but enough time if they make good use of it. “Would you like to help conduct the search for your replacement?” Madison cocks a half-smile, and Washington sighs. “You’ve already got someone in mind, haven’t you?”

“David Humphreys, sir. His experience is more corporate than political but I’d peg him for the public-service, slash-my-salary-exponentially type.”

“Well, if you sell it like that.” Madison grins sharply. “Talk to Gil, we can carve out an evening to sit and discuss it.”

He nods and rises. Washington watches him go and thinks back on the long years he’s known James Madison. First as an intern in the early years of his Senate tenure, an impressive young man of twenty-one, easily underestimated by his small stature and youthful appearance and yet an intellectual force of nature. Somewhere in those six months he’d developed something of a rapport with the newly-elected Senator Jefferson, and then had become the youngest chief of staff in the Senate, possibly on the Hill, following his graduation from Princeton the next year.

And he thinks back on the long rivalry between him and Jefferson the two Virginia men, culminating in the two years of their diametrically opposed leadership positions, and he calls Madison to a halt at the door. “James?” He turns and looks up at him expectantly. “You’re going to be a colossal pain in my ass once you’re in the House, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t want to presume, sir,” Madison says drily, and ducks out the door.


	9. 25-27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway done!

  1. **_March 2021_** (29)



****

**Reckoning to be Reckoned**

(excerpt)

 

_Congressional leadership announced last week that the Senate Page Program is to going to start taking applications again in the summer for the spring term that begins next January. Before sharing my thoughts, I’ve been waiting and hoping to get a better grasp on what, exactly, the outcome of three years of investigations and ethics hearings and oversight committees and program adjustments have been._

_Before getting into the particulars, a few thoughts:_

_Thought 1 – The whole process might have progressed speedier and smoother had the Senate not lost both its majority and minority leaders after the 2018 election. Which isn’t to say that those who took it over weren’t or aren’t committed to the issue, but as the two who launched the investigation, a continuity of the process might have proved beneficial._

_Thought 2 – It didn’t make a lot of news at the time, but a little over a year ago, Senator Philip Schuyler (F-NY) announced that the team responsible for policy and program revisions was scrapping its work and starting over. They formed a new team which incorporated former pages, which is something they should have done from the start, but better late than never. How can you postulate improvements on a program if you have no input from those who have experienced it?_

_Thought 3 – New rules and program guidelines can only go so far and, at the end of the day, teenage students will find ways to get in trouble. That’s being a teenager. But these are 16 & 17 year old kids who surely feel very grown up and mature in the moment, and the challenge is in nurturing that independent spirit while providing adequate safety and security. I worry that in the determination to prevent another situation like the Conway affair, the solution will prove little more than tighter restrictions on the students themselves and not an attempt to address the systemic corruption and unaccountability that made those events so much more than a sex scandal. _

_(I’d say the Hill_ also _needs to make clear the ethical lines surrounding personal relationships with the high schoolers on staff, but I’m reasonably confident that at no point did Thomas Conway think sleeping with a page was actually an okay thing to do, so I’m not entirely sure what to do with that. What kind of ethics training_ actually _makes people stop succumbing to their own worst impulses, I don’t think HR managers have yet discovered.)_

_Thought 4 – At the end of the day, the scandal of a senator having sex with a student page is secondary to the scandal of the number of people who_ knew _about it and attempted to keep it quiet. Is that a controversial take? I’m not sure – but we can’t escape the reality of the situation, wherein the student was proactively involved in efforts to maintain secrecy, per emails and committee testimony. The program staff and the Senate as a whole should be concerned with keeping the students safe, and sometimes that might even mean keeping them safe from themselves._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_-Publius_

  1. **_November 2018_** (2)



****

They sit up late watching election coverage the first week of November. It’s probably the least contested election in modern history, but cable news is cable news, and they’ll squeeze every available bit of drama out of it anyway.

Alexander is dividing his attention between some homework, the television, his laptop, and his phone, in a display of multitasking that will never fail to impress Mister Stevens. As it winds down uncomfortably close to midnight, Alexander’s homework finished or abandoned, Mister Stevens looks tiredly at his back-and-forth still with the computer and his rather active phone and asks, “Is that your friend John?”

“Hm,” he mumbles, typing away quickly. “Senator Washington.”

Mister Stevens blinks. “What.”

“I congratulated him on being the first president-elect in modern history to sweep the Electoral College.”

He glances at the hilariously lopsided count on the television and back at Alexander, confused. “He didn’t?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Much as you consider it a waste of space, Oklahoma is still a state and still counts.”

But the boy shakes his head and clicks something on his computer, peers intently at it a moment. “They called it wrong. It’s snowing in the northwest and raining in the southeast.”

And he repeats: “What.” 

 

Alexander goes to bed with a faint smile on his lips when the big news channels rescind their prediction for the state of Oklahoma and move it back to the toss-up category, even as the pacific state results are coming in.

 

He gets an email from Nathaniel Pendleton at ten a.m. the next morning, an hour after they reversed the call and awarded a full electoral sweep to Washington, that just reads:

 

_Tom - I just want to let you know that I had to confiscate Alexander’s cell phone in class today because he wouldn’t stop texting George Washington about election results._

_Though in fairness, I think George Washington started it._

_So…that happened._

_-Nate_

****

 

  1. **_November 2021_** (38)



 

“Oh my God, Hamilton, go _home_. What even.”

He blinks up from his computer screen and squints at Olivia, hovering around the edge of his cubicle with her expression caught somewhere between frustrated and incredulous. “Huh?”

“Go _home_ ,” she repeats. “It’s Thanksgiving. You’re off today.”

“I was home; I got bored. The news isn’t off today.”

“ _Ours_ is,” she assures him drily, and then her eyes soften and she asks, “Did you do anything for the holiday?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Third annual Thanksgiving with the Mulligans, in fact, at their parents’ house on Long Island. “Early dinner with the roommate’s family.” Missus Mulligan had sent him off with a bagful of leftover containers he’s pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to have on the train back into the city, but oh well. “I stayed once long enough to see the football thing happen; never again.”

“The football thing,” she echoes.

He shrugs. “Yeah, we didn’t really do that where I grew up.”

It’s not altogether clear to him what he’s said that renders her determined that they’re going to _hang out_ after work that night, but she snaps at him to get his coat and pack up for the night at quarter of ten. “I can’t introduce you to my favorite journalist _yes ma, I’m stuck working again this year, really_ tradition of a bottle of wine, but I _can_ introduce you to my second favorite tradition of bad Chinese takeout.”

She’s on a mission, and he struggles a bit to keep up. “Why would we get _bad_ Chinese takeout?”

“It’s good,” she promises, and he decides then that it’s best to just let her do her thing.

Which is how they end up sitting on the fire escape outside her bedroom window an hour later with boxes of steamed rice, sweet and sour pork, and beef and broccoli. It’s late enough, but early by New York standards, and he stares out over the sea of lights and watches the endless stream of cars pass eight stories below their feet.

Olivia crunches into an egg roll and then jabs it towards him and proclaims, “You’re a very curious person, Alexander Hamilton. From what magical paradise do you hail where Thanksgiving football wasn’t a thing?”

“The Virgin Islands,” he mumbles around his food. “More of a foot - _soccer_ and cricket place; granted I didn’t watch those, either.”

“Did you leave after Hurricane Howe?”

“Yeah, but I was leaving anyway. The hurricane just… _delayed_ my arrival a bit.”

“Hm.” She chews thoughtfully for a minute. “And how does a nineteen-year-old from the Virgin Islands know the disgraced-former-junior-senator-from-New-Jersey?”

A harsh bark of laughter escapes him and he leans back, lets his head thunk into the metal rail behind him. “You been waiting six weeks to ask me that?”

“Wasn’t totally confident it _was_ him until right now. Been a while since we had his face plastered to the front page bi-weekly.”

“Let’s just say that the Ashe-Blount investigation isn’t my first rodeo when it comes to upending Congressional careers. Albeit in far less personal fashion.”

“Holy shit.” He holds up his water bottle in a silent _cheers_. “Holy _shit_. I covered that story.”

“Told you I’d seen your byline.”

She blinks stupidly at him for a long moment; he supposes it must take a lot to shock someone who covers D.C. and Wall Street and all the dubious ethics therein. “Um. So like, hit me if I cross a line here, but can I satisfy a bit of curiosity?”

He’d figured some version of this was coming eventually. “Sure, I mean – just between us, yeah?”

“ _Off the record_? Yeah,” she grins. “Um.” Sobers quickly, and searches back in her memory. “The two week gap.”

“Yeah.”

“Purportedly was used to quietly send the students home before the press did… well, what we do.” He nods. “So like… _dammit_ ,” she swears, “I shouldn’t even ask, because if this turns out to be an epic scandal I can’t even write about it. But I mean… Conway was a nobody. Two weeks on and we’d mostly forgotten about him altogether. That whole first weekend, we were _sure_ we were going to find out about some botched cover-up attempt, but then…”

Alexander takes a sip from his water bottle. “If that was the goal, John André and Benedict Arnold would have been fired two weeks later as fall guys, not the same day Conway resigned. Personally, at the time, I’d have been content _not_ to have James Madison call my guardian and tell him I’d slept with a man closer to his age than mine, and _not_ to spend the next several months reading details of my own sex life in every major news publication in America.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “It was a clusterfuck. Washington and Jefferson worked with what they had.”

“How’d you get found out?”

“Didn’t, exactly,” he murmurs. “Got expelled. Realized in the course of those events that André and Arnold were basically trying to get rid of me, so I dumped the whole thing in Madison and Jefferson’s lap on my way out the door. Wasn’t expecting the level of righteous fucking fury they apparently dropped as soon as I boarded a plane.”

She nods slowly, tracing back the old pieces of an old investigation she’d run down once upon a time. “So the two weeks were _also_ about protecting you.”

“Bingo.” He chuckles under his breath, a bit resigned, a bit self-deprecating. “Washington was… well. He felt guilty. He and Jefferson tried to offset the damage I’d done my own future prospects by writing me a rec letter for Columbia.” Olivia’s brows shoot up. “Which is probably the only reason I was able to go, in the end, and that was nice of them and all except the sense has never quite gone away that I didn’t truly earn that for myself.”

“And here you are,” she nudges his knee with her own. “Three years later and chasing down corrupt assholes on the Hill.”

“My motivations must seem so suddenly transparent.”

“Did you request to join my team when you applied at the paper?”

He shrugs, feeling suddenly a bit bashful about it. “I like the way you report,” he tells her. “You’re not a sensationalist. You see injustice in the world, and set about trying to correct it.” Olivia looks away, and he thinks he can discern a bit of pink in her cheeks, even in the dark. “You didn’t breathlessly cover details about a senator’s _secret gay sex life_ like James Callender, you chased the links in the cover-up. You wondered about those two weeks, and wanted people held accountable.”

“Callender’s trash, and everything that’s wrong with modern journalism. Seriously, kid, don’t do this as a career, it’ll suck out your soul.”

“My last real job was running errands for Congress,” he reminds her.

“Point.”


	10. 28-30

  1. **_May 2021_** (32)



****

**Down for the Count**

(excerpt)

 

_Y’all gotta be kidding me._

_“News” is a relative term and any random gossip blogger who claims to have the “hottest scoop around town” doesn’t necessarily merit, you know… your uncritical attention and credulity. And if the White House hosting a wedding for the_ chief of staff _is the best the democratic-republicans and their media allies can manage as a Washington administration scandal, well – someone run the figures on the cost of Secret Service protection to allow the first family to attend the wedding of some dear friends elsewhere in a non-secure building and get back to me._

_If someone can find me some evidence that the US government footed the bill for the decorations or the reception dinner or, I don’t know, last minute alterations on Thomas Jefferson’s tux and hotel rooms for the out-of-town guests, I will muster appropriate condemnation._

_And if you are one of the people who sent me some iteration of the question ‘is a wedding at the White House_ really _the most appropriate time and place for the son of former Speaker Henry Laurens to come out?,’ stop reading my blog. Seriously, why are you even here? You should probably just leave the internet altogether and possibly move to somewhere with zero religious liberty if the sight of two boys kissing triggers you so much._

_This is why we can’t have nice things._

_-Publius_

**_edit 1_** _: I apologize for “infantilizing” the two gentlemen in question, and reiterate my suggestion to leave the country if the sight of two_ young men _kissing triggers you so much._

**_edit 2_ ** _: a frankly hilarious number of you are enthralled by my use of y’all. I will concede that no, I am not natively from New York, but I’m not from a very y’all-using place either._

**_edit 3_ ** _: This is still why we can’t have nice things._

  1. **_December 2021_** (39)



****

He double-checks the sender of the text three times, confused.

 

_From: J. Madison_

_I’m in town. Let’s get coffee._

A mistake, perhaps.

 

_To: J. Madison_

_I feel like this was maybe meant for someone else?_

The reply comes almost instantly.

 

_From: J. Madison_

_Nope. I can come up your way if you’ve got classes._

_To: J. Madison_

_I’m at work. Midtown._

_Break at 1._

Madison sends him the name and address of a hotel with a coffee shop in the lobby. It feels a little cloak and dagger, to be honest, but it’s not exactly trench coats and sunglasses, so he slips out of the newsroom at 12:58 before Olivia can grab him for one of the working lunches of which she is overly fond. Puts on his coat and the ever-clashing purple and orange scarf in the elevator and slings his messenger bag back over his shoulder, and steels himself for the shock of winter wind in his face as he turns north towards the park.

He nods awkwardly at the doorman and finds himself in a hotel _almost_ as nice as the one where he’d spent the night with John after Addy’s wedding. Turns left and pushes through a pair of heavy wooden double doors and into a cafe with a French name that’s trying too hard, and spots Madison almost immediately in the corner, a newspaper in his hands.

It’s not the _Evening Post_ , but you can’t win them all, he supposes.

He folds it carefully, and studies Alexander while he sits. For his part, he’s seen Madison in the news since he left the man outraged and frustrated at the departures line at the airport the morning he left D.C. three and a half years ago, and especially since he ran and won a seat in the House, but they’ve not met face-to-face since. Madison looks the same as he always did – pale and almost sickly-thin, unexpressive save for his keen gaze, and his whole ambiance rendered more severe by his black suit.

A server stops by before they can exchange proper greetings; Madison asks for a carafe of coffee and a plate of croissants before Alexander has a chance to even see a menu, so that’s that.

“You’re looking well.”

“You’re looking like federal politics is slowly sucking out your soul, how’s the House?”

“Recessed at the moment, thank heavens.”

Alexander grins. “It’s good to have some grownups in the room; even if it’s no fun for the grownups.”

“Flattered,” Madison returns drily. “How’s school? Figure out what you’re going to be when you grow up yet?”

He blinks. “Um. Well. I graduated in August. Been working at the _Evening Post_ since then but that’s probably more of a stopover on the way to adulthood.” Madison cocks his head in confusion. “I worked straight through summers; the school paid, why not?”

“And you’re staying in New York.”

It’s not phrased as a question, but there’s something odd behind his eyes. “I mean…” he glances around, confused. “Yeah? It’s home.”

Madison shrugs. “Thought we’d see you back in D.C. Pages get a pretty hefty leg-up when it comes to internship opportunities. They know their way around already.” 

“Yeah, I can’t afford to work for free. I’m not going to deplete my savings so I can sort mail, and I don’t need the line on my resume that badly.”

“…huh.”

Their coffee and croissants come, and the activity spares them from the looming awkward silence, gives Alexander the chance to try to pare down the defensiveness. He sips his coffee, burns his tongue a little, and watches Madison butter a pastry. “Why are you here?”

He reaches with his free hand into a laptop case and pulls out a folder, plops it onto the table in front of Alexander with no further ado. “I want you to start a national conversation.”

He chokes on his coffee and then laughs. “What?” Pulls the folder closer and flips it open and finds several near incomprehensible but very official looking documents in it from the FEC. Names and numbers and dollar amounts, campaign donation totals and registered PACs. “These are… next year’s presidential campaign finance filings?” Madison nods. “Okay. What am I looking for here?”

“It’s what’s missing.”

He flips through again before the obvious registers. “The president isn’t fundraising.”

“Nor has he submitted the proper ballot documentation. None of it. ”

Alexander frowns. “There’s almost six months until the earliest state deadlines, I don’t think he’ll have trouble hitting them. Honestly, he probably barely even needs to fundraise.”

“He doesn’t need to fundraise at all if he’s not running again.”

“That’s absurd.”

“There’s… concern in the administration.”

“This is absurd,” he repeats faintly, staring blankly at the pages in front of him. “It’s ridiculous. Doesn’t he understand what he’s _done_ here? What he could still do?”

Madison takes an aggressive bite out of his croissant, washes it down with some coffee. “He’s not a politician, Alexander. He doesn’t have the ambition of a politician; doesn’t _understand_ the ambition of politicians.”

“Surely he understands the importance of a Congressional election where neither major party truly opposes the president! The difference between another four years of centrist leadership versus John Adams and George Clinton scrabbling for the scraps of his administration.”

His companion sits back in his chair and looks at him, challenge behind his weary eyes. “Start a conversation.”

“How? I’m a researcher, barely a step above an intern. I don’t know that my…” He trails off, cocks his head sideways. “You didn’t know I finished school. You didn’t know I worked for the paper.”

Madison raises his brows expectantly. Alexander frowns. They have something of a stare-off, until Madison relents, wipes the crumbs from his hands and face very deliberately and murmurs, “Alexander, I spent more hours than I care to recall reading and redacting and picking out pieces of your manifesto for Ethics Committee hearings. I know how you write.”

And he pulls out his phone and thumbs it on, slides it across the table, but Alexander only needs a passing glance to recognize the header of his own blog.

“Am I wrong?” He shakes his head. “Who else knows?”

“John Jay.”

“No one else?” He opens and closes his mouth, and then bites his lip. “John Laurens?”

He shakes his head, sucks in a heavy breath, and throws up his hands and confesses, “Conway.”

“Jesus Christ, what did you do?”

“Nothing. _Nothing_ ,” he repeats at Madison’s dubious look, and puts his face in his hands. “ _God_. We just – ran into each other.”

“When?”

“Couple months ago. He was – I don’t know, think he came up to the city for work maybe? I just… saw him in a coffee shop in midtown.”

“And he talked to you.” Alexander winces. “You talked to him. Of course you did.”

He shakes his head dully. “It doesn’t matter. It was a brief encounter.”

“And you told him you’re Publius.”

“He guessed just like you did.” And then he adds a bit snidely at Madison’s unimpressed look, “In the balance of things, we spent far more time debating politics than we did breaking laws in Virginia, give me some credit.”

He resents this, he decides.

“I’m old enough to make my own mistakes now. It was a bad idea and I should have just walked away, is that what you want to hear? I don’t need you and the president trying to manage my life from D.C. I don’t need an internship on the Hill or a job at the White House, and -”

“Did the president offer you one?”

“I-” He sighs noisily. “He… _suggested_ it might be a possibility when I graduated.”

“Does he know you graduated already?”

“…no…”

Madison just shakes his head. “What the hell are you running from, kid?” Pulls out his wallet, slaps a couple of bills down on the table. “Because if it’s Thomas Conway, you’re not doing a very good job of it here either, apparently.”

“Well, fuck you too, Congressman.”

But Madison is unflustered, and just nods down at the folder still hovering between them on the table. “Think about it. It’s three weeks to the new year and I can’t imagine he’d wait much longer to decide.”

And he leaves. Leaves the folder behind, and climbs to his feet, collects his phone and his computer case and walks out of the café without a backwards glance. 

“Goddammit,” Alexander swears under his breath.

 

 

 

  1. **_November 2018_** (3)



****

Thomas Stevens ambushes Alexander over breakfast early one November morning with his portfolio of college application and financial aid materials. He sets a plain white envelope on top of the stack and stares levelly across the table at his bleary-eyed ward, and slides a mug of steaming coffee over. Alexander takes it in both hands and clutches it tight to his chest. “Guh.”

“Well spoken. What do you want to eat?” Narrowed dark eyes shoot him a suspicious glare overtop a long sip from the mug, and he shrugs and crunches away at his bowl of cereal until the caffeine seems to at least make Alexander functionally coherent. “How are your applications coming along?”

He shrugs. “Fine. Waiting on a letter from Miss Mitchell. Did my last stupid essay for UVI last week.” 

There’s something so appealing in the idea of Alexander following Edward to St. Thomas for college. They could live together, like a little extension of home, come back on the ferry for holidays.

His attachment to the boy, he is keenly aware, is far greater than that which Alexander feels in turn. Or perhaps it’s more the broader misery that has been his short life thus far on this island that makes him so keen to escape the region. Regardless of the reason, the effect is the same: Alexander will be desperately unhappy in such a scenario, much as he’d likely find comfort in having Edward back by his side.

So he nods and picks up the envelope sitting atop the binder in the middle of the table. “I have another letter for you. For Columbia. It’s been locked in my desk since May. Senator Washington felt it might be better received after some time had passed.”

“I… what?”

“Washington and Jefferson wrote you a recommendation letter for Columbia,” he spells out more clearly.

But Alexander just stares, brows pulled down in the middle, confused. “But… why?”

“Because you got royally screwed over by some horrible people and then did a brave thing to ensure it didn’t happen to anyone else.”

He mulls that, looking vaguely unimpressed. “That feels a little bit…hush money-esque?” 

“What? How? You literally did _not_ hush, and six months later, there’s _still_ an open congressional inquiry to show for it.”

“But…”

“But you realize,” Stevens catches his eye and holds it carefully, “that you could have made things worse for _everyone_ involved had you sacrificed your own anonymity.”

“…yeah. I guess.”

“Washington realized that, too. And he realized that the cost of your anonymity was upholding the expulsion, unjustified as he felt it to be. But that doesn’t mean he felt _this_ ,” he nods down at the envelope, sitting between them like a ticking bomb, “wasn’t justified on your own merits.” But he still looks conflicted. “He said you can read it, and decide if you want to submit it.”

“Have _you_ read it?”

“No.”

Alexander pulls the letter slowly across the table, looking more hesitant than nonplussed, but he doesn’t open it. Just drinks his coffee in contemplative silence that tells Stevens that he’s realized exactly the power of the paper before him.

There’s not a school in the country – possibly in much of the world – that wouldn’t _fight_ for a student with the explicit backing of the president. The letter in all likelihood means the elimination of any and all funding woes – not just the ability to _go_ to Columbia, but to go without the looming promise of a lifetime of student debt afterwards.

But Alexander’s pride can be a fickle thing, and he’s honestly unsure if it will allow him to take full advantage of the opportunity that’s been offered here.


	11. 31-33

  1. **_August 2021_** (35)



****

**Feels More Like a Memory**

(excerpt)

 

_When I was 17, my hometown was devastated by a hurricane, so I’ll be taking a break from my regularly-scheduled political malcontent programming to talk about the destruction we’re seeing coming out the other side of the storm along the Gulf coast this week._

_Hurricanes are unique when it comes to American weather phenomena, in that there is always plenty of advance warning that one is coming, and yet ultimately little that can be done to protect against it. Board up and cower, or flee its wrath, and plenty of people too close to the water or in floodplains get no choice in the matter if they want a hope of survival. That was_ my _situation, and it’s an experience that resonates and will undoubtedly continue to do so for a lifetime – to see familiar surroundings reduced to post-apocalyptic devastation, foliage stripped, trees and power lines in the road, a million new hazards once the storm itself has passed. A moment at the worst of the storm, when the winds are so strong and the clattering of debris so loud, that you finally are forced to stare down the realization that you could die at any minute, and then the surreal quiet that follows, for just a moment, as the eye passes over._

_To feel, at the height of summer, like you’ll never be warm or dry again._

_The stoicism bordering on nihilistic that follows, as the community prepares to rebuild, realizing full-well that they’ll be forever vulnerable to seeing it happen all over again the next year, or the next, or the next._

_In any case – the kindness of friends and strangers alike, generosity I’ll never be able to repay, got me through those tumultuous days, and now it’s time to look towards those facing long months rebuilding down south._

_[links listed below]_

_-Publius_

  1. **_December 2022_** (49)



****

“Look at that,” John comes up behind him and wraps his arms around his middle, nuzzles into the back of Alexander’s neck as he surveys the space. “Four and a half years later, roommates again at last.”

“Hm,” he tips his head back and lets it rest on John’s shoulder, “I’m not inviting Aaron and Hercules along for this one, though.”

“Why’s that?”

He grins and twists around in his boyfriend’s arms, plants a sloppy kiss on his cheek and backs up to the edge of the bed, pulling John along by the hips. “Can think of a few reasons.”

“You should share your reasons with the class.”

“ _Nope_!” a third voice breaks in just as John is climbing up on his knees to straddle Alexander’s lap, and he startles and laughs, and flops sideways to land on the bed by Alexander’s side instead. “You should absolutely _not_ share with the class.” Alexander flips Edward off, and just gets a shit-eating grin from the doorway. “Goddamn, kids, it’s been twenty minutes. Don’t think you’re supposed to fuck within an hour of unpacking, you’ll get a cramp.”

“A Saint Croix old wives’ tale, undoubtedly,” John nods sagely.

Edward comes to join them on the bed, just plants himself on Alexander’s other side. The bed’s bigger than any Alexander’s yet had in his life, but it’s not _that_ big. “Well this just got cozy.”

John snorts. “Boundaries, man, boundaries.”

The newcomer props himself on his elbow and shoots a dry stare overtop Alexander’s head. “Laurens, I can guarantee you that Alex and I have slept together more times than you.”

“Phrasing,” Alexander pitches in cheerily. “But not wrong.”

“Context is everything,” John points out. Pauses, and then asks, “Does he snore?”

“Nah.”

“Blanket hog?”

“Like you wouldn’t _believe_.”

Alexander scowls. “Well, this is nice.”

He means it though, despite his tone. Is still in awe that he gets to have this. That maybe his lingering restlessness in New York, both at Columbia and then living with Hugh, had less to do with school, work, his writing, and more about his desire to find his way home. A home he didn’t know was out there; a sense of belonging that had been lacking on Saint Croix since he was twelve.

And if, contrary to any and all expectations he’d harbored since he was sixteen, he happened to find that home back in D.C., well – stranger things had happened.

“Hey, Neddy.”

“Yo.”

“I got you a reverse housewarming present.” Edward blinks over suspiciously. “Top of the wardrobe.”

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

Alexander just blinks innocently at him, and bites his lip on the laughter as he climbs to his feet and reaches up to pluck the box down.

He just stares for a long moment, and then states blankly. “I hate you.”

John sits up. And eyes the noise-cancelling headphones. And cackles. “Goals.”

“C’mon, man, I don’t need to hear you defiling my baby brother.”

“Why does _he_ get to defile?” Alexander pouts.

Edward clutches the headphones tightly to his chest and backs slowly out of the room. “Yeah, I’m going to regret this.” He pulls the door closed; John and Alexander laugh harder.

They make out lazily for a bit, wrapped around one another in a picture of warm contentment that Alexander still can’t quite fathom despite the fact that he’s _in_ it, and eventually he just tucks his head under John’s chin and presses his ear to his chest. Lets the steady thrum of his heartbeat lull him into hazy semi-consciousness as he matches his breathing.

John’s voice rumbles close under his ear and above his head when he muses, “Maybe we’ll actually _have_ sex one of these days.”

“Hm,” Alexander murmurs, “someday.” 

They’re in no rush.

 

 

 

  1. **_May 2021_** (30)



****

George Washington sees Alexander Hamilton for the first time in three years standing off to the side of a bustling White House ballroom and having an amiable chat with Marty Jefferson, who’s got a few inches on him _before_ the heels.

After a couple minutes of discreet study, he decides he doesn’t look altogether that different with the passed time, save a drastic haircut. Sixteen-year-old Alexander had commanded a room, though; nineteen-year-old Alexander looks nervous, or maybe just a bit wary, and not particularly keen to draw attention to himself.

It could be intimidation of the setting; Washington hopes anyway, because he hates the idea that it’s the _people_ almost as much as he hates the idea that this is the boy’s new normal, that the ripples of his introduction to D.C. are still echoing down through the years.

Of course, he’d also seen his home destroyed and found himself flung alone into an unfamiliar place yet again in the intervening time, so it’s impossible to speculate upon all of the factors contributing to this snapshot image.

“Yeah, that’s not going to fly,” a slow drawl sounds in his ear, and he glances sidelong at Jefferson, who’s watching his daughter through narrowed eyes.

“What do you imagine she does when she’s off at school?” Washington asks, and gets the glare promptly turned on him.

“I don’t imagine, and good God, man, have some respect for a man’s poor nerves.”

Washington chuckles. “I don’t think your daughter is eloping from another couple’s wedding.”

“Maybe not. Marty thought he might have something going on with one of the Schuyler kids, anyway.” Washington just blinks over at him blankly, and Jefferson shrugs. “She visited upstate for New Years; guess he holidays with them.”

“Huh.”

“James said he’s texted with the kid once or twice since he moved to New York.”

Washington sighs at the implied question, and beckons Jefferson over to the back row of seating already arrayed for the ceremony several hours later. They settle in, and watch Gil and Adrienne flit about, watch family and other members of the wedding party come and go and confer amongst themselves, watch the florists hard at work transforming the space for that evening.

And they watch Alexander Hamilton chatting with Marty Jefferson.

“Alexander sent me a rather brief message when he made it to Columbia after the hurricane.” The _other_ bit of brief correspondence they’d shared, after he’d asked Madison about Thomas Paine, he doesn’t mention. Is still not quite sure how to read Alexander’s text, and the utter silence from him ever since. “I don’t think he could ever really figure out how to feel about me in the aftermath of… everything.”

“Don’t you have a lot more to worry about with your time than whether one kid thinks you’re the president of the century?”

Which is of course when Marty notices the two of them lurking in the back and drags her shifty-eyed companion over to say hi, and that’s when Washington starts to wonder if this wasn’t simply cruel. But Adrienne hadn’t known, and at the end of Gil’s fretting, he’d figured – well, if he didn’t want to come, he’d refuse.

He’s not so sure of that now, watching the pained and fixed smile on Hamilton’s face as Marty beams at them. “Good morning, Mister President. Hi, daddy.” She kisses their cheeks in turn, and then gestures back at her companion. “Do you remember Alexander Hamilton? He was a page a few years ago, we met at the Embassy Row Hotel.”

Jefferson gives the kid a dismissive glance. “The name rings a bell.”

“Oh my God, daddy, you’re so rude.”

But it succeeds in making Alexander relax and grin, so there’s that. “Well, some things don’t change I guess.” Marty cackles and whips around to give him a high-five.

“Y’all are hilarious.”

Washington smiles and leans over. “How are you, Alexander? It’s good to see you again.”

“I – thank you, sir. Likewise. I’m… good. Really good, actually.” His posture relaxes a bit, and he says it almost like a revelation. “And this is, um. Wow. The White House.”

“So it is.”

Maybe it’s just the unfamiliar crowd of the wedding then, after all. Especially with John Laurens’s flight delayed from London.

“Oh!” Marty snaps her fingers. “Alexander goes to school with Jack. Or, well, I guess Jack just graduated, but. They worked together on the newspaper.”

Which is news to Washington, but he smiles again and takes a chance. “Would you like to take a quick tour of the West Wing while everyone’s still getting set up in here, Alexander?”

He blinks owlishly. “Um. Yes.” Washington climbs to his feet and has his seat almost immediately stolen by Marty so she can sit and chat with her father. “Can I see the Oval Office?”

“Sure.”

“Can I sit behind the Resolute desk?”

Jefferson snorts. “I don’t see why not.”

“Can I call the Kremlin?”

“Ehhh…”

“I’ll let Gil know to be on standby for a diplomatic crisis,” Jefferson calls drily after them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 32 & 33 might have been two of my favorite scenes to write. 
> 
> I *think* I'm going to post a chapter a day from here on out, I'd like to have this fully up by Christmas. And then I'll decide if I want to post the third (last? not sure) piece of this universe. It's... a bit heavier than is my wont (and obviously parts of this so far aren't exactly a walk in the park) and takes place during Alexander's last school year on Saint Croix.


	12. 34-36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***  
> ***  
> a HEADS-UP on this chapter - the last section has a very blunt discussion of past underage/dubious consent situation and the surrounding psychological fallout, as it were, between the two people involved (a few years later).  
> ***  
> ***

  1. **_December 2021_** (40)



**Thinking Past Tomorrow**

(excerpt)

 

_[img]_

_The 2022 general is less than eleven months out, which means it’s time to start talking about the elephant in the room._

_Why isn’t the president fundraising?_

_A typical [serious] campaign would have had ground games up and running in every state by now. There’s a strong argument to be made that Washington doesn’t_ need _much of a ground game after a unanimous electoral win three years ago and a popular presidency that isn’t going to face a serious challenger from either major party. But the complication presented by his status as an independent alone merits some degree of campaign infrastructure, because ballot access laws are built for the parties and not all states have given assurance that his incumbency will suffice._

_We’re six months away from the earliest petition deadlines; six_ weeks _from the Iowa Caucus. If the president isn’t running, the candidates fielded by the two main parties will look drastically different than the current obligatory ideologues who are running to try to steer the conversation and get a few months of free advertising._

_If the president isn’t running, we’re going to see drastically different races all the way down the ballot, because the shock and whiplash are going to reflexively fling the parties back out to the fringes, just as we’re finally starting to see the emergence of some moderation and cooperation out of Congress instead of the instinctual need to run_ against _the president._

_If the president isn’t running again…_

_Why the hell not?_

**__-__ ** _Publius_

****

****

  1. **_August 2019_** (6)



****

He’s still numb with shock as he punches buttons to ring Mister Stevens, off on Saint Thomas with Edward, and those forty-odd miles have never felt so far before this moment. So he stares at his computer while he waits for the call to connect and runs through his options in his head.

He doesn’t really have any.

“ _Alex, hey_ ,” the man picks up, sounding a bit out of breath. He can hear Edward in the background shouting something, and guesses that they’re in the middle of move-in. “ _At the airport yet?”_

“Um.” He blinks at the weather advisory and watches the coming disaster spiral slowly closer in a surreal sort of daze. “No. Are you following the weather?”

Mister Stevens sounds a bit incredulous. “ _Uh, yeah, I’m following the weather_.”

Edward leans in to the receiver. “ _Dad’s gonna get stranded here and have to sleep on my dorm floor and it’s going to be_ so uncool _that it’s hilarious.”_

And then he’s off again in the background and Alexander tells Mister Stevens, “Well, um, Saint Croix is now under mandatory tourist evacuation. And I’m not a tourist, so.”

There’s a terse pause, and then, “ _So_ what _, Alex?”_

“They bumped me off my flight.”

“ _I – what? Can they_ do _that?”_

“They did.”

“ _Can you get on another one?_ ”

Like there are a lot of options as it is. “No. You know how many tourists are clamoring to get home because they were too stupid to leave when they thought we were _only_ getting eighty mile wind gusts and not, you know, a direct hit from the eye of the storm?”

“ _Okay…_ _can you take the ferry to us_?”

“Unlike the stupid tourists, all the smart locals booked the ferry days ago.”

“ _Then I’ll see if I can get back down there to you_.”

He puts his foot down on that. “ _No_. C’mon. That’s ridiculous.”

“ _Well I can’t just leave you alone to -_ ”

“Most of Christiansted’s being told to move inland because of the storm surge they’re expecting. You’d just end up being another body taking up space and resources in a shelter.”

Mister Stevens swears colorfully on the other end of the line but Alexander knows it’s logic he’ll be hard-pressed to argue, when he can stay on campus with Edward to weather the peripheral winds and rainfall without the worries of catastrophic flooding accompanying a direct hit projected on Saint Croix.

The question is when he’d be able to return _after_ the storm passes.

“ _Okay. Okay. Goddammit_.” Alexander sighs and closes his computer, about to go mad with the slow churning of the storm drifting west across the Atlantic. “ _We have two days to figure this out_. _I’m going to call Nate Pendleton, okay?_ ”

“Okay.”

“ _Just… sit tight and wait for me to call back. Keep your phone charged, pack an emergency bag if you haven’t already.”_

“I’ve got it.”

“ _Money, birth certificate, et cetera sealed in a ziploc?”_

He laughs, and it’s strained even to his own ears. “And about 6 trash bags to wrap up everything else.”

“ _Good boy. Sit tight_ ,” he repeats, and disconnects without further ado.

Alexander stares out the open window at blue skies. 

He can smell the ocean.

****

  1. **_October 2021_   **(37)



It’s just… one of those things.

One of those things you don’t see coming, _can’t_ see coming. One of those things you’ll forever wonder – _what if I’d made another choice in this moment_? 

He sees Thomas Conway again three and a half years later. 

He’s with Olivia in a coffee shop a couple blocks away from the _Evening Post_ ’s offices. A place that’s just far enough away from Times Square that the tourist crowds tend to miss it, a place that caters more to the local professional population. A quiet place with a gas fireplace and a chess set in the corner and a _take a book, leave a book_ shelf at the end of a row of squashy armchairs and a long bar along the window for those who care to people-watch the passers-by while they rejuvenate.

“How is it,” Olivia grouses after she pays for her latte and a croissant, “that you already have a _regular_ and can complete a transaction in here without saying a word?”

“Never underestimate the power of my caffeine-addiction,” he advises, and stares longingly towards the fireplace and then out the window at the cold drizzle slicking the sidewalks, the bright umbrellas passing by.

It’s not until his second look at the crackling fire that he registers the jolt of familiarity, a man sitting not by the fire and not in a squashy armchair and not along the bar at the window, but at one of the tables on the back wall, a laptop open in front of him and a portfolio balancing off the edge of the table, ignored while he types away.

There’s a little gray now, but the unruly curls are exactly the same. Angular and thin, and one might think he’d lost some weight but it’s just an illusion, Alexander knows, an illusion born from the absence of the suit jacket he’d always worn on the Senate floor, and he _knows_ because he’s seen the man in a suit and in a button down and in _nothing at all_ and –

“Hey.” Olivia taps his arm. “Alex.” She passes him his drink and then reaches back for her own, and uses her free hand to glance at an email that just popped up on her phone.

“I, um.” He takes the cup and glances back. Conway hasn’t moved, still engrossed in his work, and Alexander knows he should just leave. Pretend he never noticed him, trust in the balance of probability that they’ll never cross paths again and – 

–and he’s never been good at listening to even the suggestions stemming from the back of his own mind. “I’ll meet you back at the newsroom.”

“What? We’ve got that thing at four and -”

“I’ll be there, okay? I just – I’ll be a few minutes behind you.”

Her brows pull in and she looks between him and the back of the store and, okay, she’s an investigative reporter and is more observant than he gives her credit for sometimes. But she shrugs and nods, tucks the end of her scarf into her jacket and ducks out onto the drizzly street.

And Alexander walks slowly to the back of the shop, feels increasingly like he’s dragging his feet through molasses, and forces his voice into steady evenness as he reaches the side of the table. “Nine million people in this city,” Conway stills instantly at the sound of his quiet murmur, “and I run into the one I’m legally obliged to avoid.”

A soft huff leaves the man’s lips. It takes him a moment to drum up the courage to look up, but he’s got a lopsided, resigned sort of smile quirking one side of his mouth when he does. “ _You_ are legally obliged to do nothing,” he points out. “And I think my obligation ended when you turned eighteen. Nevertheless,” Alexander watches his gaze flit about, cataloguing his appearance just as Alexander had done in turn, “perhaps it is for the best if we… don’t.”

“I… yeah.” His hands tighten around his cup. “Yeah, that’s probably…” He can feel himself go pink, and he tries to will his feet towards the door, and instead finds himself gesturing to the empty chair across the table. “Can I…?”

“ _Christ_ ,” Conway mumbles under his breath, but he shuts his computer with a _click_ and watches Alexander lower himself into the seat.

So he settles in and stares down at his cup, and tries to wrap his mind around what he wants to say, can’t deny that he’s imagined this conversation a hundred times over since he was sixteen, but now, sitting here, this innocuous setting, the man looking distracted and resigned…

“You here for school?”

“Yeah,” he responds automatically, and then closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Or. Well. No. Not anymore. Graduated at the end of summer.”

Conway stares, and Alexander can see the effort to recalculate the math, figure out if he missed some years since their last encounter. “What’d you study?”

“Political science.” Another silent huff of almost-laughter. “Economics.”

“And you did that in two years.”

“I may have bullied my advisor a bit. And the bursar.” Conway smiles, and there’s something almost _proud_ behind his expression and it makes Alexander remember all too vividly how this had happened in the first place. “I, um,” he fidgets with the lid of his cup. “I don’t know if you’d want to know… I think I would, in your place, or maybe you just don’t care but… I never felt like I couldn’t say no.” Conway’s brows furrow and his mouth pulls into a tight grimace. “I, um. I’ve got issues. Who doesn’t? Maybe issues that… prevented me from walking away. But that wasn’t because of anything you -”

“Stop it, Alexander,” Conway cuts him off sharply and he looks up, wide-eyed. “Do you honestly think that wasn’t apparent?” He stares, and an icy chill settles in his gut. “Forgive me if I shatter any illusions you’ve been harboring for the past three years. And I don’t know how much I let myself acknowledge it in the moment – I like pretty, young, naïve things and that’s _my_ issue. But do you even remember what you said to me, when you first realized that my interest was not that of an innocent mentor?” He thinks back to that jarring scene, the all-night budget session, waking up and recognizing something in the man’s eyes as he ran gentle fingers through his hair and –

“You didn’t panic,” Conway says softly. “You didn’t run. You didn’t even try to say you _wanted_ it. You said _I don’t mind_.” He looks away, suddenly hot behind the eyes. “Like you did the math and decided that was an acceptable bargain in order to keep this _thing_ we had going.”

He looks down at his cup, shame rising in his chest. Even now, still the foolish kid, naïve and far too trusting. 

Conway shrugs. “I wanted something you were willing to give, and let myself pretend inexperience explained away every moment that should have given me pause, never mind the fucked up situation itself. And I paid for it,” he adds frankly. “Perhaps not as much as I should have. For what it’s worth,” Alexander forces his eyes back up and finds the fire gone from the man’s eyes again, replaced once more with weary resignation, “I had no part in André’s scheme at the end. Though if I’d had even a shred of the courage _you_ possessed on your way out, I’d have gone to Jefferson as soon as I heard and spared you the need.”

“It was probably better my way,” he says hollowly. Can’t even begin to fathom what would have happened then, if the scandal had blown up while he was still at Webster, if he’d been forced to face Washington again just hours after his expulsion and explain the whole sordid tale. “Maybe I was just a coward in the end too, but I just wanted it to go away.”

Conway smiles drily. “Did it?”

“No,” he snaps, and surprises even himself with the speed with which his hackles rise. “It followed me every step of the way through settling back home and returning to school, and it took root among the demons of my past and sent ripples I can never predict out into my future, and love and sex and any facet of intimacy are constantly weighed down by this sense that I can’t trust myself, my own judgement.”

Conway’s expression remains carefully neutral through his tirade, the only tell of his regret in the way his eyes pull tight. “Goddammit,” Alexander mutters under his breath and makes to stand. “You’re right, we shouldn’t – I’ll leave you be now.”

“Alexander,” Conway halts him halfway out of his seat and sighs, “I _am_ sorry.”

“I know.” Trusts that, if nothing else, the man is sorry for what his actions cost _himself_.

He gets two steps towards the door when Conway calls after him one more time. “Alexander?”

So he sucks in a heavy breath and turns, reminding himself that _he_ started this, _he_ was the one who just couldn’t bring himself to walk away; looks back at Conway’s curious, bemused expression, and feels something in him shatter apart completely, realizes that he really _did_ give this man everything, when he asks:

“Are you ever going to tell the world who _Publius_ is?”

He forces a smile and darts out the door, and never sees Thomas Conway again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were several iterations of that last scene. Some less harsh, some much more so, but a conversation it always felt like he needed to have in order to, as Washington & Lafayette discuss in the epilogue, fully cede his own sense of responsibility and guilt over everything that happened.


	13. 37-39

  1. **_March 2022_** (42)



****

**Headfirst Into a Political Abyss**

(excerpt)

 

_I am going to preface this with: While his Senate politics were obviously not my cup of tea, I get that Thomas Jefferson was a skilled and respected diplomat under both democratic-republican and federalist administrations and I’m sure he’ll be equally laudable as Secretary of State. And I get that Washington likes to balance out his cabinet since the federalists won the vice-presidency lottery. The below critique is not a criticism of having a highly-placed D-R in the cabinet, nor of the specific choice, per se._

_But, uh. Have we forgotten that announcement that rocked the political world almost four years ago where Jefferson was done with politics and public service? Where he threw his own party under the bus by endorsing Washington without so much as a warning?_

_Like – I’m not saying political favors were exchanged. At least not explicitly. It took the incoming administration a while to settle on outgoing-Secretary Pickering. But I’m at a bit of a loss to reconcile Jefferson’s sudden change-of-heart, because he doesn’t strike me as the “asked to serve and couldn’t refuse” type._

_Is he just bored back home on the farm, or is Jefferson playing his own quiet game of chess? I hadn’t given the timing much thought before, but it’s worth remembering that Jefferson made said announcement not long after the Conway scandal which implicated someone in his own office. Washington was inevitably going to win in 2018 – was his resignation a feint designed to hitch his career wagon to a popular president instead of his own disintegrating party?_

_Prediction: he’ll resign the post early-mid 2025 and then be conveniently free to step in and unify the feuding D-R leadership and put up a strong fight against the inevitable federalist nominee John Adams for the 2026 general._

_Shrug._

_-Publius_

  1. **_December 2018_** (4)



****

There’s a fish tank in the waiting room. Salt water. Alexander stares at it, nonplussed, watches Nemo dart in and out of his anemone and says, “Why.”

“Entertainment? Decoration? Distraction?” Mister Stevens suggests by his side.

“The ocean is two blocks away. I can smell it.”

“Can you see the fish?” He turns and stares dully. “Well, then.”

It’s their third go-around with this nonsense, and Alexander is over it. Thought that maybe after the last one had started in on the importance of correcting his sinful path and finding his way back towards God before five minutes had passed and, indeed, even before Mister Stevens had left the room, that he might just drop the whole thing. But just as Alexander started to relax again, attention divided between college applications and upcoming semester finals without room for much else, he’d announced a new appointment for a Monday afternoon after school all the way across the island in Frederiksted.

So here they are, on said Monday afternoon, staring silently at the fish. “So what’s so great about this place?”

Which feels like something he maybe should have asked _before_ , but that would have involved engaging with the process beyond the bare minimum of attending the initial, doomed-to-fail appointments.

Mister Stevens clears his throat and says delicately, “A lot of the staff here specialize in trauma counseling.” Alexander turns slowly to him and cocks a cool, deliberate brow. “Which, for _our_ purposes, means they have a privacy policy for minors independent of HIPAA. I’ve already signed what I need to sign; no one’s going to sit us both in a room and talk about our _family vision_ for therapy.”

“Oh.” He looks at the fish a bit more charitably after that.

In a way though, it’s kind of like having a bluff called; when a middle-aged woman with a gentle smile calls his name and summons him back to her office, hesitation swells up in him and he turns back to look uncertainly at Mister Stevens, who smiles and shrugs, as if to say _this is the way you wanted it, right?_

He hates the man sometimes.

(He doesn’t.)

So he follows Doctor Kortright and settles himself in a big armchair that looks like it should be comfortable, but it’s overstuffed to the point of being stiff and the back is too straight, and uncomfortable furniture is _not_ enough reason to declare this failure number three, but –

“Would you like something to drink, Alexander? Water? Tea? Coffee?”

“Oh. Um. Coffee, please?”

She sets a mug up at a Keurig and hits a few buttons and rambles a bit. Her background, her professional history; her kids, the last one just off to college, and then she’s handing him the cup and setting herself up with a clipboard, a folder, and a pen in a chair a few feet across from him while the desk in the corner sits ignored.

“Tell me a little about yourself?”

And here they go. “I don’t want to be here.”

“No one does; I wouldn’t mind sipping a margarita on the beach, myself, and that was kind of already obvious from the fact that your guardian made the appointment and did all the paperwork. Boring.”

He blinks. “Well, you’re already doing better than the last one, he didn’t even spend enough time with the intake forms to realize Mister Stevens isn’t my father.”

“How many have you seen?”

“You’re the third.”

“What was wrong with the first?”

Tone dry, Alexander says, “I didn’t like his office.”

“How’s mine?”

“This chair is really uncomfortable.”

“Would you like to sit somewhere else?”

Which is how they end up sitting on the floor, his mug set well off to the side so he won’t forget about it and kick it standing up. “What did Mister Stevens already tell you?”

She shrugs. “Not a lot. A barebones picture of how you came to be in his custody. The fact that you are… unenthusiastic about this process.”

“And nothing about…” he trails off, and she just keeps on smiling politely, waiting him out. “Uh. What happened in the spring?”

“No. What happened in the spring?”

Dammit. “I made dubious life choices.”

“Oh dear.” Her lips quirk wryly. “You’re sixteen, which usually means drugs, sex, or alcohol.”

“Is there any age at which those _aren’t_ the three big contenders?” Her grin widens, showing teeth. “Uh. Sex.”

“Hm.” She’s got her pen poised over her clipboard but isn’t writing anything, not yet. “Consensual?”

Jesus Christ, does she know how to go straight for the most tangled of knots. “I honest-to-God do not know how to answer that question.” Eight months ago, he’d have unequivocally said _yes_. All he knows now is that the answer isn’t exactly _no_ , and he can’t figure out what lies in between.

So here’s what he’s expecting: the obvious answer, bordering on flippant – that if he doesn’t know, the answer is _no_.

And here’s what he gets: “But other people have been answering it for you, haven’t they?”

“I – yeah.”

“Okay.” She jots something quick, but then puts her notes down and folds her arms across the tops of her knees and studies him closely. “Finding that answer for yourself seems like a good place for us to start, don’t you think?”

 

 

****

  1. **_January 2020_** (13)



****

It takes him until the night before he and Eliza are due to catch the train back down to the city to drum up the courage to tap on Senator Schuyler’s half-open study door while the rest of the house is either preparing for bed or already asleep.

The man glances up overtop a pair of reading glasses propped low on his nose while he types something out on his computer. “Oh hello, Alexander.”

“Can I talk to you for a minute, sir?”

“Ah.”

“…Philip…”

Still weird. Not altogether helping his nerves.

“Come sit,” the senator nods at the squashy armchair in the corner behind his desk. “You can provide me with a much needed interlude from my attempts to politely yell at Elbridge Gerry in such ambiguously written manner that it’s not altogether clear whether or not I’m being rude.” 

Alexander remembers Senator Gerry all too well; he sympathizes. 

So he pads quietly into the room in the fuzzy socks Peggy got him for Christmas and climbs into the proffered chair to wait. Schuyler finishes his thought and spins in his chair, removes his glasses and fixes Alexander with a kindly smile. “What can I do for you, son?” He fights from cringing. “You and Betsey ready for your early departure?”

“Yeah, um. Yeah, we’re good.” He shifts awkwardly in the deep chair, sunken in the cushion and feeling like a little kid with his feet not touching the floor. So he moves to the edge and props his forearms on his thighs and explains, “I wanted to say a couple of things about, um… you mentioned a couple times over these past couple weeks the committee that’s responsible for reforming the Page Program, and…”

“Oh,” Schuyler blinks at him. “Certainly. Betsey’s not been too keen to discuss it, but Angelica’s never shied away from offering an opinion in her life, if there’s something you’d like to add…?”

He’s heard plenty of Angelica’s opinions, the couple of times it’s come up, and he doesn’t much disagree with them; but she’s missing the point when making them. “I, ah – despite my somewhat ignominious departure from the program, it was an important experience for me. One I’d rather not see… _lessened_ for future students.”

And Schuyler shrugs affably. “Certainly. We feel much the same. Obviously the question of balancing independence and accountability for the students is at the core of our discussions.”

“Because a student disappeared for six hours and was well within Webster’s rules until it hit curfew.”

“That’s right.”

Alexander shakes his head. “You’re solving the wrong problem. A buddy policy off Capitol grounds, or a two-hour limit on unaccompanied absences from the dorm, might have stopped Thomas Conway from committing a misdemeanor in Virginia, which is the part that everyone cares about because it makes for the best headlines. But it wouldn’t have prevented the situation from escalating to the point that the student _agreed_ to disappear to Virginia for six hours.”

A frown is starting to crease the senator’s brows, but he waves his hand. “Go on.”

“Make students accountable by _letting_ them carry phones. Issue cheap little pay-as-you-go phones if you don’t want them staring at smartphones on the floor. Half your problem is solved right there, because it’s a lot harder to regularly disappear to a hideaway office in the basement if your best friend is calling you to figure out where you’re meeting for lunch. If you’re expected to be reachable if a proctor is looking for you or to check in.”

Understanding is settling over Schuyler’s face, and he asks softly, “What’s the other half?” 

“Having a schedule that doesn’t _facilitate_ casual interaction between students and staff. Set a regular lunch break for the students, regardless what the body is doing. All the better if it doesn’t often coincide. Let the pages off at four, even if you’re in session until six. Limit how late they can work when it comes to the occasional overnight debate. You have to understand,” he murmurs down at the floor, can’t look at that keen but compassionate gaze any longer, “for all the fuss about what happened _off_ Capitol premises? Email from the Webster basement, a quiet corner of the Library of Congress to talk, and a private office during lunch breaks for everything _else_ ,” he ticks them off his fingers. “What happened in Virginia was an afterthought. An exceptionally _stupid_ afterthought to a whole host of exceptional stupidity that had been building for two months.”

Schuyler clears his throat and says softly, “I’m sorry, Alexander; I didn’t know.”

“Well,” he forces a lopsided grin, “I don’t exactly advertise it.”

“Of course,” he murmurs, distracted and troubled and staring absently at the moonlit sky out the window next to his desk. “We are going about this all wrong, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know if it’s _all_ wrong,” he hedges. “But I think it could be better.”

He beats a hasty retreat as soon as he can thereafter without being rude; leaves Schuyler to his pensive mood, and can’t help but wonder if the man doesn’t feel a little awkward about having invited the hitherto-unnamed teenager who slept with one of his colleagues into his house for the holidays.

But at the train station the next morning, while Peggy is saying her goodbyes with Eliza, the senator pulls him into a warm hug and tells him, “It’s been a pleasure having you, Alexander. Come back anytime, okay?”

“You’re embarrassing him, Philip,” Missus Schuyler mumbles by their side.

He doesn’t mind so much.


	14. 40-42

  1. **_May 2022_** (44)



****

**Provoke Outrage, Outright**

(excerpt)

 

_Well, here we are, folks; again into the homestretch. 435 House representatives up for reelection, 34 senators, almost three dozen statehouses, and countless down-ballot races._

_(The presidency is theoretically up for grabs too but, having established that President Washington is, indeed, going to seek a second term, I’m not going to insult the intelligence of my readers by breathlessly speculating as to whether or not he’ll win.)_

_(He’ll win.)_

_(Not unanimously in the EC this time though – sorry, Mister President.)_

_In unsurprising but forever disappointing fashion, we’ve seen the following assaults on democracy since the 2020 midterms and census: state legislatures taking advantage of population shifts to redraw district lines to their party’s advantage; a concerted effort to make voting harder for college students by obfuscating residency laws; a concerted effort to make voting harder for densely-populated areas by closing polling stations in cities and adding more in rural areas; a concerted effort to make voting harder for workers who can’t afford to take time off on a random Tuesday by limiting early voting options; and a concerted effort to make voting harder for, frankly,_ anyone _by restricting access to mail-in ballots_.

_Which isn’t to mention the existing issues, some of which are still held up in the judicial system, of ID laws designed to disenfranchise minority and young voters at disproportionate rates and the practice of stripping voting rights from felons, in a country that still manages to prosecute anyone who isn’t white in highly unequal measure._

_Before getting into the state-by-state breakdown of who is_ most _interested in corrupting and controlling the system and to what end, it is incumbent upon me to point out that their efforts are only as good as their constituents remain ignorant to them or too lazy to counter them._

_Fuck the system – be informed. Piss them off by learning the hoops they’re setting up and jumping through them enthusiastically. Vote their asses out of office and find public servants who will protect their constituents’ rights, even when it’s politically inconvenient to them._

_Vote._

_-Publius_

**_edit_** **:** _No, I have no interest in mandatory voting, I’m interested in cultivating a culture in which people not only_ care _, but understand what it is that they’re voting for. Remember way back when, we talked about the horrific civic ignorance of the American public? [link] Why do we want more of that in the voting booth?_

 

 

  1. **_June 2020_** (19)



****

Kitty Livingston has constellations of freckles on her shoulders. 

He hadn’t realized that back in March. Her face is pale and smooth and her hair fiery red, and the rest of her had been covered from neck to toe, protected against the last determined vestiges of winter clinging through their supposed spring break.

But now it’s summer, and she’s traded in the sweater for a sleeveless shirt that says _Fuck the Patriarchy_ and the boots for strappy sandals, and instead of letting her thick wave of hair hang about her neck and shoulders for warmth, it’s twisted up in a complicated braid.

And so he can see the constellations of freckles on her shoulders. He either loves them or hates them, suspects it’s a little bit of both in the end, and this is doing absolutely nothing to clear up his confusion on whether _oh hey, Eliza said you’re staying in the city for the summer, let’s hang out_ means… anything beyond _hanging out_.

Whether he _wants_ it to, for that matter.

They meet for lunch and then walk up and down Broadway, and she points to all the shows she’s seen and the ones she wants to see, and the one her parents are taking her to that night, which is the whole reasons she’s come up to the city in the first place, and she doesn’t seem to mind taking the bulk of the responsibility in directing the conversation, so he does more listening than contributing.

She knows the city better, anyway.

And then she says, “Show me Columbia,” and takes his hand and pulls him towards the nearest subway station.

“It’s kind of boring in the summer,” he calls after her, barely clinging to her fingertips as she weaves through the crowd.

“Is there coffee?”

He grins to himself. “Yeah.”

“Library?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Dorms?”

She looks over her shoulder and winks, mischievous, and he swallows. “Uh. Yeah.”

“Sounds like you got your bases covered, then.”

In the end, they only make it as far as the coffee. But they do make out a bit on the grass in the quad before she has to head out to meet her parents again, and that’s nice too.

 

  1. **_August 2022_** (45)



****

They get Thai delivered the first night of John and Edward living together as roommates in John’s father’s old townhouse in D.C. Edward’s still got bags from a shopping excursion strewn about the place, but they carve out enough space on the living room floor for the four of them to sit and eat.

Or in Alexander’s case, forcing himself to take the occasional bite around marveling at having the other three together in one place again, something he thought he’d never see beyond John’s New Year visit to Saint Croix almost four years ago. Never really thought he’d see Mister Stevens in the mainland, and had to stop and stare and blink several times once he came crashing into the apartment, his train delayed, to find them all sitting around and laughing, waiting for him.

He launched himself into the man’s arms in a way he’d never have dared when he left the island three years ago, and the relief on Mister Stevens’s face told him that he’d never quite managed to convince himself that Alexander forgave him for the dramatic nature of his departure for Columbia.

(Edward mentioned once in an email that his father felt it was just another example of someone abandoning him; Alexander had never even thought to compare the situations, let alone equate them.)

And so having cleared whatever remained in the air on that front, and having spent the past three years letting himself grow more comfortable from afar with the sentiments of familial attachment he feels for the Stevens men than he ever dared allow himself under their roof, it comes as a shock to the system that borders on betrayal when Mister Stevens asks him to stay behind while John and Edward run out for dessert. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Dad,” Edward mutters, “we talked about this.”

“ _You_ talked about this,” Mister Stevens warns him, tone almost sharp, “and it’s not up to you.”

So that gets John’s brows up and Alexander’s furrowed, but he waves the other two out the door and watches his old guardian curiously, cautiously, hands wrapped around a coffee mug to keep them from fidgeting.

He doesn’t drag it out. A few seconds after the door closes behind the other two, Mister Stevens sighs and leans back against the front of the sofa and says, “James has been looking for you.” Alexander’s stomach promptly plummets. “He came to the restaurant asking if we’d kept in touch.”

“Wha -? I mean… _Jesus_. What the hell?”

“I know.”

“I mean seriously, what the actual _fuck_.” Mister Stevens just shakes his head, sympathetic. “How long ago?” He’s maybe a bit more accusatory than strictly necessary.

“A month or so.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Just that you’d left a few years ago for school. He, ah…” he clears his throat and says softly, “He asked if you were doing alright. I said far’s I knew. And that’s all. He left a number for -”

“I don’t want it,” Alexander cuts him off harshly. Puts down his coffee, runs anxious hands through his hair. “Just – _Christ_.”

Mister Stevens smiles sadly. “If you want to think on it before I leave -”

“I don’t want to _think_. I don’t want it. Neddy was right.”

And then he says the worst thing by far: “Whatever’s happened, Alexander… he is your brother. Your family.”

The rage explodes out of him. “ _Fuck_ that. And fuck you, I _have_ a family. I have you and Neddy, and John, and… and Christmases with the Schuylers and Thanksgivings with the Mulligans, and late nights after work talking on the fire escape with Olivia, and the inconvenience of some common blood doesn’t lessen that. I’m not going to absolve him just because he’s having a crisis of conscience eight _years_ later.”

“Okay,” Mister Stevens holds up his hands in defeat. “Okay. I didn’t want to deprive you the chance of some closure.”

Which just puzzles him. “Closure for _what_? Is he _sorry_ that he wished I died instead of mom? That it was easier to just pretend that I _had_?” He shakes his head. “Fuck it. Fuck him. I don’t want it.”

“Is it alright,” Mister Stevens asks levelly, “if I call him when I go back home and tell him you aren’t interested?” 

He snorts. “Yeah, go ahead. Maybe he’ll feel better about himself knowing he tried.”

 

But the tendrils of doubt are planted, and he stares at the ceiling that night, restless, more irritated by John’s unconscious state than lulled by his rhythmic breathing. He battles with himself for a half hour of lying in rigid stillness, lest he wake his snoozing boyfriend, trying to decide whether to creep down into the kitchen for a cup of tea, lest he wake Mister Stevens where he’s camped out on the sofa.

Rattling around for a mug wakes him anyway; he comes to the kitchen and quietly pours his own cup from the kettle on the stove while Alexander mumbles down at the floor, “I’m sorry. Three years later, and I’m still lashing out at you like… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I wasn’t exactly expecting you to be thrilled.”

It’s not blood. Not even law, not since he turned eighteen. It’s distant and sometimes it’s messy – but it’s family.


	15. 43-45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost done. urf.
> 
> #44 has another emotionally charged reflection on past underage/dubcon situation but between two other people.
> 
> I will also clarify in advance that the drinking age in the Virgin Islands is 18, not 21.

  1. **_September 2022_** (46)



****

**I Probably Shouldn’t Brag, but…**

(excerpt)

 

_[img]_

_Do you see that? That’s the cover of TIME’s_ Influential Internet Personalities _edition, which is like the poor man’s version of the Person of the Year edition, and guess who got an honorable mention write-up?_

_[img]_

_Look. ^ ARE YOU LOOKING? ^ ^ ^_

_Funny story actually, I guess someone from the magazine sent me a message which I totally wrote off as a joke, asking if I’d like to do an interview, finally shuck my anonymity, and make the list proper. The answer is still no, so don’t ask, Every Other Major Publication/Outlet in the Country and Half the Minor Ones in NYC._

_Anyway, it’s truly a very great honor to be attributed with a rising civic engagement among young (particularly college) Americans, though I’ll still mostly thank President Washington for the call-out some eighteen months ago that put the blog on many more radars than it may otherwise have reached._

_And once more, just for fun- the group of Boston College students after my own heart who took the post which the president mentioned and set it to music, entitled_ Sit Down, John _: [link]_

_-Publius_

  1. **_December 2018_** (5)



****

With holiday season on Saint Croix comes late nights and special events at the restaurant, so Tom Stevens excuses himself off to work an hour after they return from the airport with their guest. The boys go out for dinner in his absence, with vague talk of wandering the town and exploring the beach after dark, and he sees a text from Edward on his way home letting him know that he’ll be out later with some high school friends.

He gets home to a quiet, dark house, and is pulling out his phone as he unlocks the door to clarify where Alexander and John are. But before he sends the text, he steps through the kitchen and into the living room and sees their guest sitting with his feet curled up under him, peering at his phone and only the faint light of a reading lamp otherwise illuminating the room.

“Hi,” he looks up, and the teen’s done an admirable job at hiding the evidence, but the croak in his voice gives away the fact that he’s either been crying or fighting back tears. Stevens smiles a bit sadly, questioningly, and John laughs and rubs at his eyes. “God. Sorry. We’re a mess.”

“You boys fight about something?”

“No, no,” he sighs. “S’just… been almost eight months, you know? Lots we can’t really… talk about by text.”

Which answers a question that’s been lurking since Alexander mentioned his friend who wanted to come visit. It feels like an opportunity, the chance to talk to someone who was actually _there_ , someone who saw Alexander daily during the whole thing, and he’s just starting the running debate in his head, if he can bite back the guilt and bring himself to _ask_ , when John quietly says, “Can we talk? Maybe outside?”

“Yeah,” he replies automatically, surprised. “Yes, let’s… let’s.” Glances back towards the kitchen. “You eighteen?”

“Since October.”

“You boys drink tonight?” John shakes his head. “Want a beer?”

And that’s how he ends up sitting on the back porch steps with the son of the Speaker of the House, toeing off his shoes and trying to flex the cramps out of his feet after a long night, feeling the condensation form on the glass bottle in his hand, breathing in the ever-present ocean air.

“You lived here your whole life?” John asks around a sip of a beer he’s far too comfortable with, considering he can’t legally drink back home for another three years.

“Hm,” he nods. “Went to school in San Juan. But otherwise…”

“It’s nice. The calm. Comparatively.”

“It gets boring after a while; and then you learn to embrace the boredom.”

John fidgets a bit, sets down his drink and pulls up his sweatshirt sleeves and sighs, and says neutrally, “I feel like living with Alexander would rarely be boring.”

He chuckles – it’s not wholly without mirth, but he can hear something brittle in it. “On the contrary, Alexander expends a great deal of energy in maintaining a perpetual façade of unobtrusive amiability.” John glances over at him, brows raised. “The airport today? Yeah, he doesn’t really… do that.”

“Cry?”

“Show me that he’s struggling.”

“That can’t be healthy.” He shrugs, helpless, and the teenager at his side bites his lip and says, cautious, “He says you forced him into therapy. Which isn’t… I’m not asking or… critiquing, or whatever. I’m just – maybe you should know? That he sees it that way.”

It _is_ a bit of a blow, that the reluctance isn’t just maintaining appearances. But it’s also only been a few weeks at this point. “It took a long time getting there, it’s not much of a surprise.”

They fall silent for a few minutes, drinking and staring out over the yard, the eerie shadows cast by the porch light. Crickets and beetles the constant white-noise around them.

“I knew something was wrong,” John confesses, shattering the peaceful calm with a soft admission. “I didn’t know what. Didn’t know what to do, because I was afraid of getting Alexander into trouble. But in retrospect…”

“You shouldn’t do that to yourself,” Stevens tells him quietly but firmly. “You know you can’t judge on hindsight.”

“Yeah. But. He was holding on to a secret, you know? And he put a stop to it when he thought that secret was on unstable ground, and I just…if I’d asked more questions earlier. Or if I’d talked to Jefferson or Washington… I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t have… gotten so far.”

He sighs. “When I’m feeling particularly…ragey and morose about it,” he tells John, “it helps to remind myself – as much as I’d like to gouge the man’s eyes out with a spork, as much as it drives me absolutely _crazy_ that he won’t even have a bullshit white-collar prison stint for it – Alexander _did_ put a stop to it. Which means he _could_.”

“Yeah.” He drapes his arms over his knees and deflates. “I’m going to Europe for school next year and I don’t want to tell him.”

“Maybe you can figure something out around holidays here and there, or summers.”

“I guess. I figure we’ll manage to always just miss each other. Him in New York, me in London, me back home and him back here.”

Stevens clears his throat awkwardly and murmurs, “If he does go to Columbia, I very much doubt he’ll be coming back, John.” John looks up sharply, surprised. “He’ll turn eighteen midway through his first year. _Maybe_ the dorm’ll kick him out and he’ll have to come back that first winter break, but. He’s been done with Saint Croix since he was twelve.”

“You love him a lot, don’t you?” He lets out a heavy breath and shoots the teen a sidelong look. “That must be hard.”

“I could never be what he wanted, you know? He wants his mother. I’d thought there might be _some_ emotional niche where we could carve out a closer relationship, but… I think those few years were just too big a shock to the system. And now I’m worried that they skewed something in his perception of healthy intimacy even beyond the familial. That’s why I insisted, despite his objections, on finding him someone to see. Maybe it’ll only backfire on me, I don’t know.”

John mulls that over for a few minutes, and, as he finishes his beer, tells him quietly, “I also love Alexander very dearly, but we’re not together. I didn’t come here to sleep with him. In case you were worried.” Worried probably isn’t precisely the word. “T’be honest, I don’t think Alexander’s even quite… figured himself out, yet.” Mutters down at the bottle dangling loosely in his fingertips, “Don’t suppose Thomas fucking Conway much helped on that front, either.”

He doesn’t ask; they’re getting uncomfortably close to _gossiping_ about the sleeping boy, and that’s the last thing he wants. But he does tell the brooding teen at his side, “I’m glad you came; Alexander doesn’t form close attachments often, far’s I can tell. But he spent a long time after he got home working through his own anger- don’t give him some more to deal with.”

“Of course not, sir.” John smiles wryly up at him. “Why do you think we’re sitting out here?”

“That tropical night air?”

He laughs. “Really though… I just wanted to tell you – well – _I’m sorry_ isn’t quite it. But I wish I’d done something. Done _more_.”

“I know. Me too, in my own way. Since he came to live here… since Rachel died, really. But,” he slaps his hands down on his knees and levers himself to standing, “regret gets us nothing save a fitful sleep, and I’m beat. Do you need anything? Did you boys figure out your sleeping arrangements?”

“Yeah,” John says quietly, “we’re alright. I’m fine.”

 

Their sleeping arrangements, as he discovers when Edward comes snickering into the kitchen the next morning, phone in hand with a picture he’d taken from Alexander’s doorway when he stuck his head in to see if they were awake, is tangled up in a mess of limbs on the narrow twin bed.

“They’re so _cute_ ,” Edward shoves his phone under his father’s nose and then slumps against the counter, fumbling for a coffee mug. “Is this the part where you awkwardly sneak a box of condoms into Alexander’s dresser and I get to give John the shovel talk?” 

“I don’t think so, and no, please don’t.”

“I’m just saying, that is not platonic cuddling, dad.”

They’re fully clothed, it’s not exactly _non_ -platonic cuddling either, by his brief glance at the image of Alexander with his face pressed into his friend’s neck and John’s arm draped over Alexander’s shoulder and curled up into his mussed hair.

He sits back in his chair and fixes his son with a level stare. “Tell me about your semester, son. Classes going well? Any exciting extracurriculars? Meet any lovely young ladies you’d like to talk about?” 

“You make an excellent point.”

 

 

 

 

  1. **_November 2023_** (51)



****

He’s up to his eyeballs in figures from the latest draft of the newest trade agreement the administration has been cooking up when his boss sticks his head into his cubicle. “Look alive, Hamilton,” Morris snaps. “You’ve got a meeting upstairs.”

“Oh.” He blinks at his screen full of import and export data, and then down at the four heavy binders stacked on either side of his computer and in danger of overbalancing and falling off the desk entirely. “Did we move up the meeting with the trade minister, or…?”

But Morris shakes his head and steps into the crammed space and physically turns his swivel chair around to urge him along. “I’ll handle that.”

“Am I being fired?”

His boss laughs. “Don’t think they’d summon you upstairs for that and deny me the privilege.” He stands and shrugs on his jacket, and Morris studies him a moment. “Fix your tie. Alright. Chief of staff’s office, chop chop.”

So he darts up the stairs in that carefully measured balance between _arriving quickly as possible_ and _not looking like a sweaty mess when he does_ and winds his way around the lobby and down the corridor and-

“Ah! Alexander.” He jumps as an arm descends around his shoulders and steers him to the left and away from Lafayette’s office. “What luck, running into you here.”

“Um. Good morning, Mister President.” He looks back over his shoulder at the closed office door. “I, ah – Mister Lafayette asked to see me.”

“I’m the president, Alexander, Gil can wait.”

“…Of course, sir.”

They head towards the Oval, Washington still steering Alexander along, but then he halts abruptly and ducks instead into the smaller private study that is… not-so-private today, it seems, and more than a little crowded once he beckons Alexander inside and closes the door.

And the whole pretense drops. “Alexander Hamilton, I’d like to introduce Hugh Mercer.” The third occupant of the tiny room inclines his head and reaches out a hand. “Hugh is a retired Army colonel, Finance Corps. More recently, he has the unhappy job of supervising a bunch of accountants over in Arlington.”

Alexander shakes the man’s hand, but shoots Washington a sidelong glance. “Nice to, uh… nice to meet you, sir.”

“Alexander joined the NEC team downstairs almost a year ago,” Washington tells Mercer. “He’s got a head for numbers – poli-sci and econ at Columbia – and perhaps most importantly, he doesn’t mind pissing people off.”

It’s said with such affection that he can’t even be mad; hell, he can feel himself go pink.

“And since I just happened to run into the two of you, I’m going to just happen to relay a funny occurrence from my last year in the Senate. Spring of eighteen, all night budget session.” Alexander looks at him sharply. “I stumbled upon a group of pages recuperating in the lobby, with a particular young firebrand holding court among his weary colleagues and demanding greater accountability in our Defense appropriations practices.”

Oh. _Oh._

Retired colonel; supervises accountants in Arlington.

Jesus Christ.

“That firebrand of a page offered to audit the Pentagon for me; I told him to finish school. A funny tale, no?”

“Hilarious, sir,” he deadpans.

“Hm. Well. I have meetings, I’m afraid. But if the two of you wanted to continue this discussion that is absolutely not a meeting that absolutely does _not_ appear on the president’s daily schedule anywhere, well. Who am I to stop you?”

And then he’s just _gone_ , and leaves Alexander alone with this total stranger in this crammed little room. “Um. Was that entirely necessary?”

Mercer snorts and settles back in his chair. “No. But he’s not wrong.”

“Why are so many people so adamant about not given the Defense Department’s finances a serious look?”

Mercer fixes him with a steady look. “If you need to ask that, Mister Hamilton, you’re nowhere near as smart as he credits you for.”

“…okay, fair.” He takes up the other chair and leans in, watches Mercer watch _him_ with a reserved sort of calculation in his eyes. “So what are we talking about here?”

“The president wants to have a plan to start _talking_ about auditing the Pentagon in time for the State of the Union.”

“So we’re here to… talk about a plan to start talking about a plan to start an audit?”

The older man smiles drily. “Something like that.”

His life is absurd.


	16. 46-48

  1. **_November 2022_** (47)



****

**This is Not a Moment, it’s the Movement**

(excerpt)

 

_I’m afraid I don’t have the time to be quite so thorough in my musings as I was two years ago, but here we again find ourselves hours away from the opening of the first polls in the east and here are my thoughts:_

_The president is going to lose the parts of the south and west that would never have gone for him in the first place if good southern democratic-republican Thomas Jefferson hadn’t thrown his weight behind him four years ago. So we’re talking South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and the Dakotas._

_Washington will take Texas handily, but the media wants to breathlessly cover at least_ one _big state like it’s a toss-up so, enjoy._

_Now for the interesting part: the Independent wave. Maine, Vermont, and Texas are going to elect independent senators. The House is going to jump from 7 to 20, mostly from states where running as a federalist is toxic branding but the policies themselves aren’t, you know… unreasonable. [see: countless prior musings on American civic ignorance]_

_Which will leave us as follows:_

_Senate: 61-36-3_

_House: 231-184-20_

_Federalists are unequivocally running this show for the next while; hopefully the cautious hand of the president’s veto stamp will keep them humble._

_Notable among statehouse races – Ohio’s state senate and Florida’s lower chamber are probably going to split 50-50. Georgia is finally going to see a federalist majority in the senate, with the D-Rs barely clinging on in the house. Governorships are going to change party hands in Nebraska, Indiana, Arizona, and Arkansas. Texas, despite its Senate outcome, is going to maintain a D-R governor at the helm. Alaska is among the few states where D-R control over state politics is going to be more solidified after tomorrow._

_Now, as to the big tossup races…_

_…_

_…_

_…_

_-Publius_

 

  


  1. **_January 2021_** (25)



****

Undergraduate research assistants, in Thomas Paine’s experience, take up more of his time in managing their work than they actually contribute to _his_. But he accepts one, year after year, because it’s a gentle enough way of introducing them to the tedium of academic research and writing, and a more fulfilling way of earning some extra spending money than swiping meal cards in the dining halls.

So the program assigns him another one, another year, and he emails with one Alexander Hamilton whose name sounds very vaguely familiar but not enough that he’s had him in class before; except when he shows up at their scheduled first meeting at his office in the Political Science department, Paine realizes he _did_ have him in class, ever so briefly. 

They shake hands and introduce themselves, and as Alexander lowers himself into a chair, he grins and points and says, “I remember you. You walked out on my class, what? Last fall?”

He expects a bit of embarrassment at the tease, not the full flush of mortification that settles on the young man’s face. “Uh,” he stammers. “Spring.” 

Paine shrugs. “S’what the first day is for, no worries.”

He likes to think he’s demanding, but fair, and on balance that seems to hold up in student perceptions at the end of each term. There will always be those dismayed by the expectation that they actually read and absorb some of the material, but he makes no secret of the work and invites those who aren’t willing to put in the effort to find another section.

Which is to say he expects Alexander Hamilton might be one of those sorts, and forms his expectations for his research work accordingly. By their second weekly meeting, it’s obvious that he is _hilariously_ wrong on that count, and by their third, realizes that Alexander may well end up being a bigger asset to him this term than his graduate TA, though he can’t bring himself to be surprised that when the two _do_ meet, they hit it off and quickly become thick as thieves.

By week four, he’s learned the following about Alexander Hamilton: he’s a nineteen-year-old who expects to graduate in the summer, qualifying him as a senior and thereby making him eligible at all for the research program; he’s an academic force of nature, taking twenty-one credits in _addition_ to the work he’s putting in with Paine; he works behind the scenes with the _Spec_ and has an interest in dabbling in the media, despite taking _no_ journalism classes; and that he’s from the island of Saint Croix and hasn’t been back since the devastation of Hurricane Howe.

Finally, after about six weeks, he can no longer contain his curiosity and genuine bafflement, and he asks, “Why on earth did you walk out of my class last year? You’d have done phenomenally with the coursework.”

He gets a glib response that isn’t an answer at all, but says very well that it’s a touchy point and not one he cares to discuss. So he drops it.

Alexander and Robert, his TA, do come over for dinner on a Sunday in March at the end of their spring recess; it’s no surprise to his wife when the three of them disappear to discuss their work, but their guests prove to be engaging and charming dinner companions when the food hits the table.

In May, he asks Alexander if he’ll continue working for him until he graduates, and then bullies the department until they agree to keep paying him to do so.

At the end of the month, Elizabeth murmurs one night as they’re lying in bed reading on their phones, “Gil Lafayette got married, did you see?”

“Hm.” They moved in different legislative circles, but have enough mutual friends and acquaintances that he’d heard the buzz.

A minute passes, and then his wife says, “This article is horrid.”

He leans over and glances at her phone. “It’s the _Capitol Scribe_ , what did you expect?”

“Trashy D.C. gossip,” she replies blandly. “But this particular trashy gossip is half about Gil’s wedding and half about Henry Laurens’s son kissing another boy at said wedding, it’s awful.” He hums noncommittally. “Dear?”

“Hm?”

“Didn’t we have the boy John Laurens is kissing over for dinner a while back?”

He laughs. “What?” And looks at the picture she’s holding up on her phone, and then snatches it out of her hand and scrolls through a handful of pictures until he gets to one of none other than Alexander Hamilton talking animatedly with the president while an unimpressed Thomas Jefferson looks on.

“You didn’t mention he interned on the Hill,” Elizabeth says off-handedly as she takes her phone back.

He couldn’t have, Paine thinks, regardless what the article claimed. Not with his whirlwind school schedule, not with working straight through two summers so he could graduate in two years.

When Alexander returns to work the following week for summer term, after a week of contemplating theories and mulling the things he knows about Alexander and the things he doesn’t, Paine just remarks on his newly short hair.

“Gets hot in the summer,” Alexander responds after a beat.

And they leave it at that.

 

 

  1. **_March 2014_** (1)



****

In the end, he picks thirty-four books. Thirty-four from the couple hundred on his mother’s bookshelves. His favorites, hers, ones they read together, ones they promised they’d get to in the years to come.

Thirty-four books. It sounds like so little; it looks like a _lot_ , and he eyes the stacks uncertainly and bites his lip, and glances up at Peter. His cousin smiles that same smile, that mixture of pity and earnest compassion and wary nerves that’s lingered constantly about his face since their lives were both so completely upended two weeks prior.

Peter starts to open his mouth to ask a question, but Alexander preempts him, tilts his head and asks, “Why do you look at me like that?”

His cousin blinks. “Because you’re sad, and I can’t fix it.”

“Oh.”

A beat passes. “Did you figure out the ones you wanted, then?”

He shrugs dully and nods at his stacks. “It that too many?”

“We’ll make room. Don’t worry about it.”

But he does worry; he worries because James won’t. Because he’s barely seen James since the funeral, and Peter has enough to deal with settling matters between their house and their mother’s shop, not to mention _his_ life and job before it was invaded by a moody seventeen-year-old and a constantly sniffling twelve-year-old and –

“Hey.” A hand touches his shoulder cautiously. “We can come back; finish another day.”

Alexander just shakes his head, stares at the books and wonders that the essence of a life can be condensed down so far. “No, I’m done.”

If James went through this ritual already, Alexander doesn’t know what he collected. Their mother’s stories hadn’t enraptured him so, he’d never shared their enthusiasm for reading creepy Poe stories by candlelight, or alternating chapters of Dickens read aloud.

“Why don’t you go wait in the car,” Peter suggests. “I’ll put these in the trunk.”

He starts collecting volumes. “I’ll help.”

“Your doctor said you shouldn’t exert yourself.”

His brow furrows, momentary confusion; his own fight with the flu almost an afterthought. “I’m okay.”

“Alex.”

He can’t stop; can’t sit and let himself start thinking, can’t wait in the car staring at the house he no longer occupies, just the emptying shell of his old life.

By the time he collapses in the passenger seat, breathing heavier than he’d care to admit with his temple pressed to the cool window, he can taste the salt of the silent tears sliding down his cheeks. Peter says something his brain won’t translate, and then reaches over and fastens his seatbelt for him.

They’re almost back to Peter’s house in Frederiksted when he murmurs, eyes fixed on the road and knuckles white for how hard he’s gripping the steering wheel, “I’m going to take care of you, Alexander.”

Peter’s always been there – watched them when James was still too young to be home alone or babysit; when they got a little older, more of the mischievous uncle sort at family gatherings helping them get into trouble.

When their father had taken off, an escape from home when things got tense; a sympathetic ear, a confidante.

How this next stage will be defined is too early to say, but – “I know,” Alexander mumbles. And he means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last piece will be up tomorrow.  
> There's a 4-part fic #3 that I'll try to jam in before the new year as well. It's done (well, everything except a title - how is that always the last thing?) but will come with a whole host of tag warnings to heed (and another M rating), so be on the lookout and beware. Takes place during Alexander's last school year on St Croix and is Stevens-family centric. That's the last fic presently planned for this universe but never say never.   
> (Or let me know here or on Tumblr if there are any moments you'd like to see that I neglected in the snapshots here!)


	17. 49-51

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, if ye be so inclined, and enjoy the last bit here!

  1. **_December 2022_** (48)



****

**A Million Things I Haven’t Done**

_Friends. This is where we say adieu, I’m afraid._

_When I first created this blog, it was in response to a challenge: do better. It is not enough to have ideas; not enough to_ shout them in the square _, as it were. A challenge to find an audience, to convince that audience – and most importantly, as I have come to realize in recent months, to_ inspire _that audience to action._

_I’ve done more commenting on the process and the state of affairs than advocating for particular outcomes; it’s flattering to imagine the ripples of these words have had any effect whatsoever on the national conversation, let alone a single voter’s behavior or any one of the hundreds of elections that have occurred in the past three years. Influential Internet Personalities aside, I don’t know how much I believe it, but I do let my ego bask from time to time, and beg your indulgence. Pride is the oldest and most reliable of humanity’s sins, and I am no saint._

_So I rose to a challenge, and like to think I did it well. And I’ve battled some demons along the way, and cannot yet say as to whether I have vanquished them utterly, but an acquaintance of mine, another one of the three people who know me as both_ Publius _and my real-life self, issued another challenge to me a year ago today: stop running._

_And here is where I must expose myself as a coward- as one who has spent the past three years berating each and every one of you to do and be your best, I have let those demons stop me from seeking my own highest potential. And so now I say no more, and re-issue the challenge, this time to myself: do better. Rise up. Fight every second you’re alive; like you’re running out of time._

_There’s a million things I haven’t done, and I am not throwing away my shot._

_And to each and every one of you here with me along the way and at the end, remember: history has its eyes on you._

_As I move on to the next chapter of my life, I remain faithfully- your obedient servant-_

_-Publius_

  1. **_January 2023_** (50)



****

It’s when he sees his mother’s face reflected in the chubby cheeks of a grinning toddler that he knows, unequivocally, that he’s found the right James Hamilton.

It takes his breath away; the curl of reluctant nerves building in his gut explodes into something sharper, something devastating and paralyzing, and for the first time in years, he lets himself feel grief over this. For this shattered relationship, the long years of distance and silence.

For a niece he could never have known or known about, because what else could this little girl with Rachel Faucette’s face _be_ but his brother’s child?

He’s not altogether sure that he would have made himself take the next step had it not been for that face, this piece of his mother returned to the world. Doesn’t know he could have drummed up the courage, the emotional fortitude, to do it just for his brother’s sake. But he sees his mother in the bow of her mouth and the spark in her eyes, those high cheekbones, and lets his cursor tap on the icon next to his brother’s name.

And he waits.

And waits. 

And twenty minutes pass and then John and Edward are crashing through the door from school, laughing, talking about dinner, and John comes in their bedroom to find him waiting and staring in a blank sort of shock, far more fearful than hopeful. He comes and hovers over the back of the desk chair, and sees the little girl and the name beside her and murmurs a soft, “ _Oh_.” Wraps his arms gently around Alexander’s shoulders and kisses his cheek lightly and starts counting softly by his ear.

Forward, breath, backward, breath, French, Spanish, again.

He’s not there yet, but it’s nice. A reassurance. A promise.

Edward sticks his head in the open doorway and halts in the middle of a question about dinner when he sees them. “What’s wrong?”

When he doesn’t answer right away, John tells him quietly, “Think he found his brother online.”

“Oh,” Edward responds, tone flat. “Dad should never have said anything, seriously.”

Alexander swallows thickly, and looks at the little girl and turns the screen, because John wouldn’t get this, how could he, but Edward knew Rachel Faucette for a long time and –

“ _Oh_ ,” he sighs, a bit more charitably. “She looks like your mom.”

He thinks he’ll lose it, then, feels the rush of – _everything_ – well up in his chest. But then his computer _pings_ a notification at him, and a message pops up almost immediately after, and faster than he would have believed possible he slams the laptop closed and turns wild-eyed at his two companions. “You have to go. I can’t – I can’t do this with an audience.”

There’s too much here. Too much, and he’d never had the words to explain, not in the years living down the hall from Edward, more of a brother than James had been in the end; not in the late nights lying awake with John whispering hopes and dreams and confessions back and forth.

So they leave without argument, just a last reassuring squeeze to his shoulders from John. And Alexander sucks in a deep breath, and opens his computer again and sees that his brother accepted his friend-request, and then clicks on the new message in the corner.

 

**James Hamilton**

_-I’m sorry_

It’s too much. Too much, and not nearly enough, and he chokes on a sob and types back:

 

_You didn’t do anything_.

- _I know. And I’m sorry_.

 

And he realizes he doesn’t know where to go from there. Isn’t sure if there’s _any_ bridging this chasm, never mind the little girl with their mother’s face. He can feel the anger building alongside the grief, winning out, and then another message pops up a minute later and it’s not lost on him that James is probably floundering just as much on his end.

 

_-Did Tom Stevens get ahold of you?_

It’s mundane enough that he answers automatically.

 

_Back in August. Came stateside to help Neddy move for med school._

_-It’s good you were able to keep touch with them._

He doesn’t know, Alexander remembers; Mister Stevens hadn’t volunteered much when James showed up in Christiansted looking for answers.

 

_He got custody about a year later, fostered me until college._

_-Oh_

_-He didn’t say._

_-I guess he wouldn’t have, though._

There’s a lengthy pause, and then:

 

**-** _I want to see you. And I know I have no right to expect that._

_-You have a niece. She knows she has a Tio Alex out in the world somewhere._

_She looks like mom._

_-Yeah. She really does. Looks like you when she’s thinking real hard though._

_-I just want to know if you’re doing okay. Tom said he thought you were._

The anger fades away to a dull ache, and mostly he’s just… _sad_.

 

_Yeah. I’m okay._

_Great, actually. I live with Neddy and my boyfriend. John._

_-Still in school?_

_Graduated from Columbia in ’21._

_-Jesus._

_-You in NYC then?_

_Moved to DC last month_

_Just started a new job. Economic policy analyst. Which is an exotic way of saying I crunch numbers with absurdly long and out-of-date formulas that the govt needs to stop using._

_-Wow. How’d you land that gig?_

He bites his lip and sighs. Isn’t going to trace the threads of that answer today in this awkward, disjointed conversation with a brother he’s not communicated with in nigh on a decade.

 

_The arc of my life has been a bit absurd in recent years._

_Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell you about it._

_Tell me about your daughter. What’s her name?_

This is simple. Easy. Safe.

He thinks.

 

_-Ah. Um._

_-Raquel._

_-Raquel Alejandra._

_-Lucía gets to name the next one._

He spends that night curled up and sniffling in Edward’s bed.

John seems to understand.

 

  1. **_May 2022_** (43)



****

Gil forwards him a news article one night as he’s preparing for yet another night of too-little sleep, feeling his age deep in his bones and trying not to let the prospect of _four more years_ wear him down too much too soon.

 

_From: Gil_

_Someone’s been busy_

 

He clicks to open the link from the _New York Evening Post_ and frowns at the headline:

Post _Reporter Olivia Wolcott to Donate Pulitzer Award to D.C. Ethics Watchdog_

An admirable move, to be sure, but hardly one he’d expect to merit Gil’s especial attention. They’d followed her reporting and the eventual, inevitable Congressional inquiries through much of the past year.

 

_To: Gil_

_Did you not see she won when they announced last month?_

The reply comes through before he has time to put his phone down.

 

_From: Gil_

_Read the article, old man._

He sighs and obliges. Reads about the ceremony held at Columbia the afternoon prior, a summary of her series on poorly-veiled insider trading among senators and congressmen whose places on certain committees gave them a certain predictive advantage in particular corners of the market and her motivations for donating the earnings as she did.

And then there’s a lengthy acknowledgement of the publisher and the editors who supported her investigation, and the small team of researchers who helped her comb years of stock values and campaign contributions and committee testimonies, including –

“Oh,” he says aloud and blinks down dumbly at his phone. There’s a picture at the end and sure enough, there with Miss Wolcott and three other young men and women is a grinning Alexander Hamilton at the _Evening Post_ ’s table during the awards luncheon.

 

_To: Gil_

_Huh._

_To: Alexander Hamilton_

_Congratulate Miss Wolcott on her Pulitzer for me, please._

_From: Alexander Hamilton_

_She turned instantly bright red, just so you know_

_From Alexander Hamilton_

_She says “On the record?” (I think she’s joking)_

_From: Alexander Hamilton_

_Oh, she’s not joking, sir._

_To: Alexander Hamilton_

_My support for her work is well documented by now, I think._

_I didn’t realize it was your work, too, however._

_To: Alexander Hamilton_

_When did you graduate?_

There’s a lengthy pause, and he climbs carefully into bed so as not to wake Martha, and is about to give up for the night when:

 

_From: Alexander Hamilton_

_Last August._

_I wasn’t on Olivia’s team all that long before submissions, to be honest._

 

Washington recalls standing in Tom Stevens’s kitchen four years ago. The weight of two weeks’ worth of guilt bubbling deep in his gut. The reprimanding voice in the back of his head – _why did he never take the time to get to_ know _the boy?_ And perhaps more importantly – _why couldn’t he see something was wrong, anyway?_

And he recalls telling Stevens – _I find myself invested in his future_.

Four years later, and it’s only now occurring that helping secure it against the potential damage inflicted by Conway’s actions, by Arnold and Andre’s conniving, obliged Hamilton in no part to keep him apprised as to the progress of that future. And it occurs, finally, that Gil had foreseen the awkward position in which the boy might find himself as a result. That Gil more keenly understood the potential for the boy to reject outright any attempt to maintain a connection, however distant.

That the worst thing he probably could have done, upon seeing Alexander Hamilton for the first time in three years, upon hearing about his studies, his research assistantship with Thomas Paine, was suggest he ought to bring his intellectual savvy to the administration upon his graduation, even imagining it to be yet two years out rather than three _months_.

And like he’s reading his mind from two hundred miles away:

 

_From: Alexander Hamilton_

_John and Edward are both going to DC in the fall for med school_

_So I’ll be down to visit from time to time._

_From: Alexander Hamilton_

_I’m not done here yet. In New York. I just… I’m not done._

_From: Alexander Hamilton_

_But maybe after the election we can pick up the conversation we started before the wedding last year._

_From: Alexander Hamilton_

_Or if that was just you being nice, we can blame this conversation on the celebratory wine I’m Totally Not Drinking._

_To: Alexander Hamilton_

_We can absolutely do that._

_Give my regards to Mister Laurens and the Misters Stevens._

He refrains from chiding him for the drinking part.

Gil would be proud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading - hopefully these were fun and a fun addition to the Senate Floor story.   
> Until the next time -  
> -your obdt. St.

**Author's Note:**

> [Come Tumbl Me](https://faceofpoe.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> I like talking and questions and other randomness. 
> 
> Which reminds me, a big cheers to **Aidennestorm** who encourages me and listens while I ramble. :-D
> 
> Haven't yet decided how often I'll update but I'm impatient and it's just in fine-tuning stages now, so. At least 3 a week again I should think. Chapter 2 on Friday.


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